


And the Blood Chalice

by whimseyrhodes



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Hurt!Jake, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-12-07 07:54:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11619243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimseyrhodes/pseuds/whimseyrhodes
Summary: A new cult is discovered when the Clipping Book sends the LITs on a quest. However, Eve is in Egypt with Flynn, so who can protect our Librarians? Enter, the Amazons.





	1. Amazons are Real?

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own, just like to play with these characters in my spare time. Also, some place names and relics have been made up so don’t bother looking them up, you’ll just confuse yourself ;)

“Where did Flynn run off to this time?” Ezekiel asked the general room. Jacob was hunched over a pile of scrolls and translation books and Cassandra was curled up sideways in a comfortable looking armchair, a book in her hands. Jenkins was behind his desk, murmuring and sifting through various relics and papers.

None of them looked up, but it was Jenkins who answered. “Mr. Flynn went to Egypt to find the Toad Stone of Niogenes.

Sweet the uses of adversity.  
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,  
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”

“That is just….gross,” the thief said, wrinkling his lip.

As he spoke, the clipping book rustled and the four of them looked up at it, Jenkins already walking toward it as it opened and the pages fluttered. He put his hand on the page revealed as it finally settled and started to read.

“C’mon, mate, out loud for the rest of the class!” Ezekiel huffed, stepping up to Jenkins’ side and peering around his arm. “Missing persons?”

Jake and Cassandra had joined the other two and she continued. “Sixteen men have gone missing on the Isle of Mull in the last two weeks. Sixteen!?”

“What’s this other article down here,” Jake interjected, pointing to an article on the lower right side of the page. “Blood Chalice?”

“Oh, dear,” Jenkins said, drawing the attention of all three. “The Blood Chalice. I thought that was a myth.”

“Don’t we deal with myths every day?” Jones asked flippantly. “I mean, Excalibur, the Apple of Discord…”

“I meant that this chalice, this was… If it really exists, we may have a bit of a situation on our hands, and nothing we can do about it.”

“What do you mean we can’t do anything,” Jake frowned, gesturing at the table the book rested on. “We have to, the Book wants us to!”

Jenkins shook his head. “No, we can’t. Ms. Baird is with Flynn. There is no one to protect you.”

“Surely the clipping book would have known that,” Cassie wondered. “Otherwise it wouldn’t have brought it up. Not if we can’t do anything.”

Jenkins was interrupted from answering by a knock on the door. 

“Whaaa…..?” Jones started as the three LITs looked at the door, surprised. “Someone’s…at our door?”

“Interesting,” Jenkins muttered on his way to ward the door. Opening it, he heard the gasps behind him as he saw the waiting party.

Three fierce looking women stood in the doorway, their skin darkly tanned and sleek with muscle. Feathers and gem chips adorned their wild hair, and they wore an assortment of leather, armor and fur, swords strapped to their hips and a bow across the back of one. All three held a white envelope, and the one with the bow also held a scroll. The looks on their faces ranged from confusion, to annoyance, to outright murderous.

“My dears,” Jenkins said warmly as he made a little bow, then stepping back and taking the scroll thrust at him as they walked past. “Please, come and be welcome.”

“Why does the Library require our assistance?” the blonde asked, holding up her white envelope.

“Lykopis, you know the Library only sends out requests when it’s necessary,” spoke the dark haired one. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at the Librarians. “We are apparently to assist these….Librarians,” The word left her mouth with a hint of distaste. “In their next quest.”

“Please forgive her,” the blonde said, a warning in her gaze as she looked at the other woman. “She is not happy to be taken away from her hunt.”

“Hunt? Quest? Jenkins, what’s going on here?” Jones asked, his neck getting sore from watching the back and forth by-play.

“Mr. Jones, Mr. Stone, Ms. Cillian, may I introduce to you Alcinoe, Lykopis, and Andromeda, women of the…”

“Amazons,” Jake finished before Jenkins could, his voice somewhat breathless. “You’re…You’re Amazons,” he said again.

“The young man is astute,” Alcinoe said, somewhat dryly, one dark brow rising as she looked at him. Her eyes traveled to his boots and back up. Jake’s jaw snapped shut and he felt his cheeks redden at the frank appraisal but he stubbornly stood his ground.

“Amazons?” Cassandra and Ezekiel chorused together.

“Amazons?” the thief continued, getting so excited he nearly bounced. “You mean, like Wonder Woman?”

“Diana is still in Themeyscira,” Andromeda said, turning her head slightly to look at the thief out of the corner of her eyes. “She will not be joining us in this quest.” Ezekiel silently geeked out at her words, his excitement apparently annoying Andromeda, who stepped closer to Alcinoe. Seeing the other Amazon’s interest in the scholar, she took her own assessment of the man, liking what she saw and smiling like a lioness.

“Uhm, whaaaat does this mean?” Jake asked, finally tearing his attention away from the Amazons and back to Jenkins. “They’re what, bodyguards or something?”

“On the contrary, Mr. Stone,” Jenkins said, breaking the seal on the scroll and unrolling it. “They will be your….Guardians By Proxy for this mission, if I may say. Since Eve is with Mr. Flynn in Hamunaptra, the Amazons have been called to take her place.” His brows went up as he began to read the scroll to himself.

“Hey, rest of the class, remember?” Jones said, crossing his arms as Jenkins looked up, startled for a moment, as if he’d forgotten the rest of them were there.

“Oh. Yes. ‘Dear Sir Galahad, Greetings from Themeyscira. As three of my Amazons have come to me bearing white envelopes, I am daring to assume that the fabled Library is in need of our accommodation. I am therefore allowing my warriors to travel to your abode, hoping to further nurture our relationship. I trust that they will keep your Librarians in best of health. Further, I am holding the greatest hope that you and I will be able to meet again…..’ Um.” He cleared his throat and stopped, holding the scroll close to his chest, but not before Jones popped over his shoulder and read a few more words.

“‘My dearest Galahad’?!” he crowed, looking at the older man.

“Well,” Jenkins cleared his throat again, tugging at his bow tie. “We were…ahem…”

“Sir Galahad and our Queen Hippolyta were known to each other some time ago,” Andromeda said cooly. 

“Known?” Cassandra asked, confused as Jones smirked.

“You mean, they were…?”

“Friends.” Andromeda interrupted, shooting a stern look at the grinning thief. “Now, as your Guardians, we will be at your sides through the entirety of the mission, and will shadow you as such.”

“Great,” Jake muttered as Cassandra jumped up and down, clapping, her enthusiasm not quelled by Stone’s reticence. “Great!” she echoed, her face lighting up. “They’re going with us!”

The Amazons dry expressions seemed to agree with Jake’s attitude this time as they all regarded the redhead with apprehension. Jake muttered under his breath again and turned away.

………………

The door opened on the Isle, wind whipping around them as they stepped out onto the steppes. Jake heard the Amazons unsheathe their weapons and saw an arrowhead over his shoulder out of the corner of his eye. “Easy,” he held up his hand. “C’mon, there’s no one here.” 

He was right; there was no one in sight, only endless green, brush and ocean past the far cliffs in front of them. Further to their right, an old forest rose on the hills, and at the crest were the ruins of an old castle surrounded by what appeared to be the ruins of an abandoned village.

Below the abandoned village, disappearing into the green tree line, was another town that showed signs of life.

“So that’s Drogiarny, the town where the men disappeared?” Cassandra asked, tilting her head. “Sixteen men, from one village. That’s….a little alarming.”

“More than a little,” Jake added, frowning. “I’m surprised the place isn’t swarming with cops.”

“Just as well that it isn’t, mate,” Jones piped up. “At least we won’t get thrown in the slammer.”

“Less talking, more moving,” Lykopis growled, prodding the thief with the fist holding her sword. He jumped away from her and started walking, grumbling the whole way and sneaking glances over his shoulder. 

Over the course of their walk, the Librarians found themselves gradually pairing off with the Amazons as the women seemed to choose their charges. Lykopis stuck close to Cassandra while Andromeda chose Jones, leaving Jake to be shadowed by Alcinoe. 

“So, according to Jenkins, this Blood Chalice was based on a cult in Wales started by a Mari y Fantell Wen, or Mary of the white cloak, who claimed to have been married to Christ and would never die,” Jake murmured half to himself, running over the information Jenkins had given him and bolstered by his own knowledge.

Alcinoe’s brows raised as she turned her head, surprised at his words. “Yes,” she agreed. “According to some accounts she was a maidservant at the Maentwrog rectory, while others say she lived in Breichiau in Llandecwyn parish.”

“You’re right! That’s on the border with the Maentwrog,” he exclaimed, looking at her as they walked, finally turning backwards to walk as they spoke. “But she did die, and was interred on the 28th of October, 1789 in Llanfihangel-y-traethau churchyard. It’s said that the sect died out not long after she did.”

“But this Blood Chalice is nothing like what I understood that cult to be like. It was said that they were peaceful, simple people,” the Amazon answered, confused.

“Yes. But from what Jenkins has found, this chalice was handed down from generation to generation, each becoming darker and more evil. Apparently one of her sons, Domhnall Ciardha Feardorcha was angered that she ‘dared’ to die,” he said, using finger quotes around the word. He turned around again and continued as they followed Jones and Andromeda. “And he thought that God had forsaken her by letting her die. He thought that somehow she should have been resurrected and he turned to the Occult to find a way to do that.”

“Dark Ruler of Men,” she murmured at hearing the man’s name. “And then, each successive generation continued that tradition, looking harder and harder for…what?” Alcinoe asked. “Her resurrection?”

Jake shook his head as the group came up on the village. “It wouldn’t make any difference. She died over two hundred years ago. There wouldn’t be anything left to resurrect.”

“Any why kidnap sixteen men?” the Amazon wondered.

………………..

Three hours later they joined up after the three pairs had split to question the inhabitants of the village. 

“Anyone find out anything new about the case?” Jake asked as they walked up the hill towards the ruins of the long ago abandoned village.

“No one knows anything,” grumbled Jones, who walked ahead, echoed by his Amazon, Lykopis. “Nothing.”

“Except that there’s two more missing,” said Cassandra, stopping the others in their tracks. “Now it’s up to eighteen.”

“Why isn’t anyone freaking out yet?” Ezekiel asked, flustered. “I mean, look at this , mate1 Eighteen men missing, and no one says anything??”

“Nineteen,” Jake said somberly. “Alcinoe and I discovered one more.”

They all looked at each other as the enormity of the situation became clearer. “The numbers, and the speed at which these men are disappearing is quite alarming,” Andromeda said softly. “Coupled with the fact that no one seems to know about it, or is concerned…”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that no one knows,” Cassandra interjected hesitantly. “No one came out and said anything, but I felt…distinctly chilled when speaking with some of them. Like they were hiding something.”

Her Amazon nodded. “Indeed.” Lykopis nodded. “And some seemed cowed by the questions we were asking. As if they knew something but could not, or would not, say.”

“Hey! Look at this!” Jones exclaimed, bouncing and then dashing off.

“Dammit, Jones!” Stone yelled. “Stay in sight!”

“It’s a monolith!” came the thief’s reply. “Or a obelisk? Whatever, it’s got runes and stuff on it! Jake, you could translate!”

Muttering, Jake hurried after the sound of his voice, the others trailing behind him. Ezekiel was standing in front of a tall structure that was indeed a obelisk. It was made of a dark stone that looked out of place in the forested area. It was in the center of a roughly circular clearing of sorts. At the four points of the compass stood smaller versions of the same, and a shiver ran up Jake’s back. “Don’t touch anything,” he said, knowing the thief’s propensity to snatch anything shiny.

“C’mon, mate,” Jones chided. “This is your area of expertise, not mine.” Stepping back, he revealed a smooth area in the center that was covered with runes and Stone stepped closer, intrigued.

“It’s cuneiform,” he said, almost to himself.

“Can you read it?” he heard Alcinoe ask.

“Kind of.” He tilted his head and leaned closer. “It’s old, rubbed off in places…” Instinctively he reached forward to thumb off a speck and he heard the rest of them exclaiming. Too late he realized that he was doing just what he’d yelled at Jones for. A heavy weight slammed into his back at the same time that a blinding flash of light engulfed him.

TBC


	2. Oops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oops. Jake pulls a move worthy of the master thief and lands them both in deadly trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me for not updating sooner: I had most of Chapter two written but real life and family emergencies knocked me off track.

CHAPTER TWO

“Dammit.”

Jones glared at the scholar out of the corner of his eye, mouth twisted in a frown.

“I’m sorry!” Jake said, cringing a little at the look.

“And you tell ME not to touch anything!” the thief scolded.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just….get out of here.”

“Where IS here, anyway?” Jones asked, looking around. The two Librarians were in a stone room, with the feeling of being under ground. It was dank and musty, with an overwhelming scent of copper and something else

“Wherever it is, I think we need to move.” Jake felt air flowing at his back and turned to head down whatever tunnel was there when three figures appeared. He gasped. “Uh oh.”

“What… Um, Jake?” he heard Jones’ voice quaver a bit behind him. Turning again, he saw three more figures in front of the thief, effectively boxing them in. 

Jake and Ezekiel moved back to back as the six men closed in on them.

………………

“Jake!! Ezekiel!! Oh, God, where did they go?!” Cassandra yelped, spots still flickering along the edge of her vision. The Amazons were bristling with weapons, having armed themselves the instant Jones had knocked into Jake. Swords and knives in hand, the three women circled the obelisk.

“Transportation spell,” Alcinoe finally said. “It must be.”

“Can you duplicate it?”

The dark haired Amazon tilted her head and shrugged. “Jacob Stone did nothing but touch the stone. There was no incantation.” She held out her hand. “Logically then, it should work for us if we touch it. But let us keep hold of each other as well lest we lose one another.”

The other two reluctantly sheathed their knives and placed their hands on each other in a line, Andromeda moving Cassandra into the middle of the group. Alcinoe took a deep breath and reached out for the stone.

Nothing happened.

Tilting her head again, this time in confusion, she withdrew and touched it again. Still nothing.

“Did you touch in exactly the same place?” Lykopis asked.

“Yes, I made sure of it! Here, on the top curve of the glyph on this side. That’s where he touched it. We should have been taken as well!”

“Then why weren’t we?” asked Andromeda.

Cassandra stepped back, seeing mathematical symbols dancing in the air in front of her, and then she understood. “Because we’re women,” she said, looking at the other three again. “It only takes males. Remember all of the missing persons? All men.”

……………..

Jake and Ezekiel followed the two dark robed figures in front of them, the other four behind them. They’d tried unsuccessfully to get the men to talk, finally giving up.

“I think I know where the missing men went to,” Jones whispered to Jake.

The scholar had been thinking on those lines as well. “Right here,” he answered. “One of them in front of us I recognize. His picture was on the bookshelf in one of the houses Alcinoe and I visited.”

“One of the ones behind us too,” said Jones. “So… Why are they playing bodyguard and travel agent, mate?”

“No idea, but I think we’re coming up onto wherever they’re headed.”

Where they were headed turned out to be an immense cave hollowed out of the rock. They came out of the tunnel onto a walkway that surrounded the entire cavern, and looking over the railing they could see down for another twenty feet. 

The cave was set up as a amphitheater of sorts with a stage set against one wall. There were oddly shaped stone blocks on it, no two alike, faced with rows of carved stone steps deep enough to sit on. In the center of the stairs was an aisle that led back to a larger cavern, edged all around with iron barred doors.

In front of the cells was a deeper bowl-shaped pit that looked to be filled with something, but Jake couldn’t tell what it was from the distance between him and it. 

A staff prodded each of them in the back and when the two men turned around, a different man stood behind them. This one had dark red robes and wore a hood over his head as the other men did. As they watched, he pointed his staff to the staircase, and the black robed men herded them down to the bottom. 

Jake didn’t have a chance to look into the pit; he was distracted by yells from the cage to their left. “Help! Let me out!” 

Their captors shoved them each into a cell, the heavy iron doors banging shut before they could even turn around. Jake pivoted, grabbing onto the bars with a tight grip. “Jones, you okay?” he hissed.

“Fine,” he heard the sulking voice reply in the cell to his right. “Just peachy. Wonderful accommodations, mate.”

Jake growled at the sarcasm. “Look, can you get us out of here or what?”

“Oh, now I have to rescue your smart ass?”

“Dammit, Jones!”

“You blokes had better hope you can get out of here,” came a rasping voice from the next cell.

Jake pressed his face to the bars and looked around. He could just see Ezekiel doing the same from the cell to his left. “What do you mean by that?” the thief asked.

“Other than the obvious?” muttered Jake.

“He’s building an army,” the other captive said. “For what, I don’t know, but they’ve all been turned into those…those…mindless robots! He tortures them and then kills them, and somehow he brings them back to life, and we’re next!”

“Wait, WHAT?!” Ezekiel yelped. “Wai…No. I am too young to die!”

“Doesn’t matter, boyo. You’re on the menu just like I am.”

“Jones, stop freaking out,” Jake snapped. “Can you pick the locks?”

The thief mentally shook himself and crouched over, studying the mechanisms. “These are old, mate,” he said, frowning

“Can you pick them!” he hissed again. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m working on it,” he muttered, slipping his picks out of his socks.

Jake listened to the thief continue to complain to himself, the occasional soft click heard now and again. Jake focused his attention on his fellow prisoner.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Pretty much just what I said. One by one he takes us out, tosses us in the pit for a while, then slits our throats. Pours something down the throat from some kind of ‘holy’ grail thing.”

“Did you come from Drogiarny? From the village where all the other men disappeared?”

“Drogiarny? No, I’m from Chesterdown, north of there about twenty kilometers. M’ name’s Cledwyn.”

“Have others disappe….” Jake started, and then heard a loud ‘clunk!’

The lock on Ezekiel’s cell door dropped to the floor and the thief hurriedly opened it. Rushing to Jake’s cell, he dropped to his knees and started to work on the lock.

“Hurry!” the other prisoner hissed. “They’ll ‘ave heard that!”

“Going as fast as I can!”

“Look out!”

The mechanism clicked open just as Jones was jerked back with a squawk, a big hand slamming the door to Jake’s cell before he could even take a step. The lock was fastened again and he looked out to see two men hanging onto the squirming thief.

“Bloody ‘ell!” he heard Cledwyn mutter, followed by a nearly unintelligible string of what he supposed were curses.

The men in the black robes said nothing, just carried Jones to the far wall where a set of manacles hung on the wall. He fought as well as he could, but they out-muscled him and chained him wrist and ankle, adding a collar around his throat that was attached to the wall as well. Then, just as silently as they had appeared, the guards left the three alone.

Jake tried to make sense of the silence but Ezekiel had no such compunctions. “That’s a fair suck of the sav!” he yelled out and Jake did a double take at the phrasing. “Fuck off, ya bloody bastards!”

“Chill out, Jones,” Jake said, leaning his forehead against the metal bars. “Can you see anything more from there?”

It took a few minutes for the thief to calm down a little and actually look around himself. “No, well, kind of. There’s all kinds of sticks around the walls. Straight, curved, whatever. The bottom is lined with what just looks like a bunch a’ rocks. Mostly just a different perspective on the same place.”

Stone sighed and let his forehead fall against the bars. A few hours later he could hear murmurs that grew into soft chanting coming closer to the cavern they were in. The man in the next cell stood up and looked alarmed, starting to mutter and yell. “Shit! shit! No, no you can’t do this, ge’ away from me!!”

The yells turned into screams as the black robed men, now with their hoods all the way up and concealing their faces, approached the cells. The one at the head of the line unlocked the door with a heavy brass skeleton key and then four of the others rushed in and grabbed the prisoner.

Dragging him out was a little bit of a strain; Jake could see Cledwyn kicking and biting but it didn’t seem to phase the guards. As he struggled, the guards stripped the man of what was left of his ragged shirt, dropping the shreds onto the floor. They forced the man down onto his knees and bent him forward, then brought what looked like a large 6x6 timber that was about four feet long. One guard pushed the man’s head down between his knees and two held his arms up while two more balanced the beam on his back. His arms were then tied down around the beam and lashed to his waist, effectively tying the beam to the man’s back. Jake knew that the weight would be about 25-30 pounds. That wasn’t much, but over time, and with his arms strapped the way they were, that weight would soon create tremendous pain and stress on his back and shoulders.

The black robes left him swearing and kneeling on the floor; he couldn’t get enough leverage to stand up. Within half an hour the man was screaming again, this time in pain, but the guards remained impassive, their voices murmuring rhythmic chants. Another half hour passed and he was reduced to sobbing and moaning. 

The torture lasted two more hours, according to Jake’s watch. He and Jones pleaded over and over for the black robed men to do something, shaking and kicking at the cell bars, but the men never even twitched as far as Jake could see. The droning sound of their chanting continued.

Finally, they stepped forward as one, as if a timer had gone off. By this time the man was almost unconscious so untying him from the beam was simple. Once it was removed they bound him again, around the wrists, ankles and thighs, and then bound his arms to his sides. 

Jake wasn’t sure if the cult members even reacted to Cledwyn’s predicament or just followed the same routine for each prisoner, but they dragged the senseless man over to a trough of water near the wall where Jones was chained. Shoving his head under the water, they held him there as he started to thrash and wriggle. More than 30 seconds passed and he started to sag, at which time the guards lifted him up. Dripping and gasping for air, the man tried to jerk away again.

Unfazed by Cledwyn’s weak struggles, they pulled him toward the middle of the room where there were symbols and runes scratched into the floor. From his angle, Jake couldn’t read any of them, but just the nature of them being scribed around a pentacle made him leery. Jake saw Cledwyn start to stir just as a gag was tied around his mouth, but he was still too out of it and stayed quiet, moaning softly every once in a while.

Leaving the prisoner in the circle, wriggling like a worm, the black robes stepped back and one took a torch from the iron hook on the wall and touched it to the outer markings. The men chanted loudly as the fire exploded upwards in a rush, making even Jake dodge backwards at the blast of heat.

Cledwyn was screaming in the center of the fire. None of the flames touched him, but the sheer heat of the inferno must have been excruciating. It was only a few moments before the flames died down, leaving the sigils glowing red hot. The chanting increased in volume as the fanatics moved forward as one, bending down and grabbing onto Cledwyn. This time they carried the man into the pit that Jake had seen from the walkway above. The scholar had studied the edges of the pit and what protruded from the sides and had come up with a grim conclusion.

Obviously, the leader of this maniacal cult wanted to break the men physically as well as mentally before the final stroke of the knife. The first step was to incapacitate them with unimaginable pain, which came from the stress position and the fire. Then was the mental torture, part of which was the fear of the inescapable fire, but also what Jake had figured out was immobilizing them and putting them in what was basically a pit of bones. Enough of the scapula, femur, humerus and other bones had shown around the edges for him to come to that conclusion. He had to conclude that the bottom was probably lined with the skulls.

This cult had been passed down from generation to generation, and he couldn’t even imagine how many people had been slaughtered in their quest for immortality. The bodies of the ‘failures’ were probably the ones in the pit, and some truly twisted mind had decided to put them to use.

Jake and Ezekiel both heard the moment that Cledwyn roused enough to realize where he was. It was muffled this time, but his screams were just as intense as before. 

“What the bloody hell is he on about?” Jones hollered, knowing by this time that they weren’t going to get any response from the guards.

“It’s a bone pit,” Jake called back.

“A what!?!”

“You heard me,” Jake yelled. “Those ‘sticks and rocks’? They’re bones, ribs and skulls!”

“Holy Mary Mother of God!”

Stone agreed silently with the thief.

………………..

Cassandra and the Amazons, now dressed in somewhat less conspicuous clothing ‘appropriated’ from a back yard clothesline, explored the village again. Hoping that the toned down dress of the other three would calm the inhabitants a bit, since strangers would be noticed in such small towns, and having been there before would make them even more noticeable, she sat in a pub listening to the conversations around them while not really pretending to stare morosely into her ale.

The Amazons sat with her, uninterested in conversation with the young Librarian. They too, pretended to sulk, but they ate while doing it. Cassandra’s stomach was just too tied up in knots to even think about food.

When the women finished, they rose as one, Cassandra looking up in surprise at the movement. “What?” she squeaked softly but Andromeda shook her head. They left local coinage on the table to cover the expense of the meals and she found herself hurrying after the confident women. When they exited, they each scanned the sightline and then abruptly disappeared, at least to Cassandra, who had even been watching them.

A hand reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into the alley. She started to squeak again but another hand covered her mouth.

“Be still, young Librarian,” she heard Alcinoe whisper. She nodded and the hand pulled away, the other releasing her. Looking at the Amazon, she saw her jerk her head to the back of the alley where the other two waited.

“I have come to the conclusion that this cult is run, not by the sons of this Mari y Fantell Wen, but the daughters,” Lykopis announced quietly.

Andromeda nodded. “I concur. This entire village seems controlled by a matriarchy, and the men who are left are the very young, the elders, and the crippled.”

Cassandra glared at her at that remark but Alcinoe continued. “Yes. And there appears to be other villages which follow this sect as well. Nineteen are missing from here, but there seem to be many more.”

“What do the women want from them?” Cassandra asked, knowing that their hearing was much better than hers and hoping they’d managed to glean some more information.

“An army,” Lykopis said. “An army to protect them, though from what, I’ve not been able to figure out.”

“Possibly to simply control the men,” Andromeda suggested. “From the conversations I heard, the women were becoming upset at the archaic rules they had to follow to appease their menfolk. Possibly this is their revenge.”

“It would make sense, O Ruler of Men,” Lykopis snarked at Andromeda’s glare. “And how have they been kept under their thumb?”

“Resurrection,” Alcinoe stated. “The Blood Chalice resurrects people. From what I’ve heard here, with a geas attached that compels the men to obey the women of the cult.”

“So there’s an entire army of these….undead?” Cassandra queried, and the Amazons nodded as one. “Great.”

Cassandra called Jenkins on her smart phone, which intrigued the Amazons no end. They were amazed at being able to see the Librarian even an ocean away.

“Jenkins, can’t you just open a door to where Jake and Ezekiel are?” she asked after having filled him in on their suspicions.

“I’m afraid not, my dear Miss Cillian,” he replied. “The door can’t seem to find them. It will connect with you, but that hardly does you any good. You’ll have to physically find them. Now that the door sees you, it can follow you to them, but it’s unable to seek them out itself.”

“Do you have anything that would help?” she asked.

“K.I.S.S, my dear.” He saw her look at him oddly and clarified. “Keep It Simple, Sweetheart.”

Sighing, she hung up the phone and put it back in the pocket of her shorts.

“That is a magical place that you keep the Librarian?” Lykopis asked, staring at her pocket. The next ten minutes was explaining to the three that Jenkins didn’t actually live in her pocket.

It took Cassandra and the Amazons the entire day to discover enough concrete information, including the location of the men where they hoped Jake and Ezekiel were as well, and come up with a plan. That night they snuck into a laundry that, laughably, was called The White Cloak. They found more than enough of the garments being cleaned that they could each take one without it being noticed right away.

Leaving the building carefully, they moved stealthily through the back streets and alleys until they came to the edge of the town, then melted into the surrounding forest.

Their plan, simple as it was as per Jenkins’ suggestion, was to infiltrate the group of women as they walked from the town to the now abandoned village near the ruins of the castle at the top of the hill. The tower had originally been the site of their rites until a storm had damaged it too badly, then they’d moved it to their ‘bad weather’ worshiping site which was deep underground in the warren of caverns.

The somber line of women paraded in front of the monument stones that the group was hiding behind, and they each nonchalantly slipped into the line one by one. The procession continued down a well-worn trail that wound around the abandoned village to a promontory that was dug into a cliff face. There were two pillars on either side with a stone door in the center, it’s hinges and metalwork faded to copper with rust.

The first woman in line wore a white robe with a red sash and she carried a staff at her side; the two women following wore black sashes over their white robes and each carried a censer from which a faint scent of incense wafted. 

The remaining women wore only the plain white robes, Cassandra and the Amazons included. The group stopped at the closed door and the woman in front raised her staff, the tip glowing a sickly green. Runes appeared on the stone in front of her and she reached out a hand, her fingertips touching the cold granite. A wisp of white smoke wrapped around her hand and the stone fell back, opening the passageway.

…………………

Jake and Ezekiel spent the next four hours listening to the moans, screams, and pleading of the man in the pit, oddly interspersed with the insanely calm chanting coming from the guards who stood unmoving around the pit, heads bowed and hoods covering their features.

Finally, when Cledwyn was reduced to tearful babbling, the man in the deep scarlet robes appeared at the foot of the bone pit. He raised his arms and the rest of the men stepped down into the pit, grabbing the prisoner and lifting him up, then carrying him past the amphitheater steps and onto the stage beyond. 

The two Librarians had to strain to see the details, but they could see that Cledwyn was being tied somehow across one of the upright stones, his back arched at an impossible angle and his wrists and ankles bound to the ground. The man in scarlet raised his arms again, and Jake saw the flash of a knife.

“Oh, God,” he muttered as the flash swooped down. He heard a few muffled screams and then a gurgling noise, and he knew Cledwyn was dead.

Turning around, he walked a few steps into the cell and sat down, his head in his hands. He didn’t know how long he sat like that, thinking, until Jones’ insistent hissing finally captured his attention. Standing, he stepped back to the bars and looked out at the younger Librarian.

“What?” he questioned.

“Heads up, mate!” the thief said, his voice trembling. “They’re coming back!”

Jake turned his head and saw the procession of black robed figures heading straight for him.


	3. Jake's Torment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A/N: I haven’t seen the episode with the Monkey King (I know, right!?!) and don’t know exactly what abilities Jake has now, so I’m placing this story as post-season 2/mid-3. ___

The man in the front of the line of guards looked blankly at Jake and it took him a moment to place the gaunt, bloodless face. “Cledwyn?” he gasped, momentarily taken aback. “What are yo…..”

His words were cut off as the door to his cell was opened, and he realized belatedly that they were grabbing for him. “No!” he yelled angrily, letting a fist fly. He caught one of the group by surprise, knocking him into a wall. The next punch landed right in the middle of a guards’ face, driving him backwards into the arms of the man behind him. 

With years of bar brawling experience, it was hard for the mute jailers to handle the pissed off Stone, but they eventually managed to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. Finally able to remove the scholar from his cell, they dragged him, still resisting, out of the small enclosure.

The open area gave Jake more room to fight though, and he took out another two guards before a burst of pain exploded in the back of his head and white light swamped his vision.

“Jake!” he heard Ezekiel yell, but he still felt himself falling face first onto the hard granite floor. Hands grabbed at him again, pulling his shirt off and maneuvering him onto his knees.

Looking up, he saw Cledwyn’s impassive face staring down at him through the stars still dancing around his vision. “led…Cled..wyn…” he slurred as two others grabbed his arms and pulled them back and up. “Wha…why…?”

Utter blankness answered him and he woke enough to snarl a little as his arms were jerked back over the beam. They tied the rope tightly, the stiff fibers poking into the skin of his wrists and waist. He shook his head and glared up at them, refusing to give them any satisfaction.

Without a word, the group turned their backs on the scholar and walked to the edge of the room where they turned to face the two Librarians. Hands clasped behind their backs, they started the droning chanting, ignoring their two captives.

“Jake! Hsst… _Jake!!_ ” Ezekiel hissed, his hands in fists as he pulled ineffectually at the chains.

“What, Jones,” Jake said wearily, looking over at the thief. They weren’t too far apart now; they didn’t have to yell.

“Are you okay!?”

“For now.” Jake wanted to shrug but didn’t dare, he knew he would pay for it if he did.

“Mate, damn we gotta get outta here!” Jones said.

“No _shit_ , Sherlock!” he snapped, glaring at the thief now. “I’m kinda not likin’ my chances here right about now! If you have any brilliant ideas, I’d _love_ to hear ‘em!”

Jake’s mini-rant shut Jones up, and he chewed on his lip as he prayed for some sort of a miracle. He watched as Jake put his head down and closed his eyes, obviously trying to prepare himself for the ordeal ahead.

It didn’t take long in Jake’s estimation for the burning to start in his shoulders. He felt sweat dripping down his temples but pinched his eyes shut tighter and pushed the discomfort away as well as he could. Ezekiel had started rambling again and he latched onto the voice, the familiar complaints easy to pay attention to. Every once in a while he would make a retort or simply grunt, and the thief would start off on a new tangent or story before eventually he eventually trailed off.

“Jake?” came the question.

“Keep…talking,” he managed to force out of his tight lungs. “Take…my mind…off of it… Should be…easy, for you.”

“Hey!” came the indignant reply as Ezekiel started jabbering away again. He watched as his friend suffered what they’d seen Cledwyn suffer through, only to somehow be turned into a mindless zombie. Talking was easy; he could do it in his sleep, and if that was what Jake wanted, he would talk as much as he could.

About an hour into the torment, he saw Jake move a little. His shoulders twitched and then he tilted to his left, so stiff that he was unable to right himself.

The twitch in his shoulder surprised Stone, who had been trying to concentrate on Ezekiel’s voice and stay as still as possible. The muscles in his sides were too stiff for him to prevent the motion from affecting him and he felt the beam shifting. Unable to prevent it, he sagged to the side and a choked off moan slipped out of his throat as a line of fire raced up his ribs.

He heard Jones talking faster in the background but the roaring in his ears was too loud to hear him. Setting his knees, he forced himself upright with his stubborn will, knowing that if he stayed crouched over to one side that it would start to hurt even worse.

Two hours later and he was moaning as Cledwyn had, his lungs compressed by his bent-over posture and unable to voice more than that soft sound. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes at each breath, and his chest burned as he forced in breath after ragged breath. 

Jake didn’t even hear the group of men moving or Ezekiel’s yells as they did. A hand on his arm pulled him out of whatever mind-space he’d fallen into and yanked his attention back to the searing agony in his shoulders and back. He couldn’t help it; he screamed.

Jones flinched, watching as Jake’s head fell back and a scream ripped out of him. The thief’s taunts and insults hadn’t drawn the guards attention one bit, as colorful and inventive as they’d been. He’d even thrown in some Monty Python but nothing fazed them. Apparently they didn’t care enough for elderberries for it to bother. Their focus was all on Jake now.

Stone’s hands burned as the blood flow returned while the guards were untying him. They pulled the beam away and he cried out as his arms dropped to his sides. He was laid out straight on the floor and the sharp ache in his hips was quickly overshadowed by the agony in his back and chest. He could barely struggle as they tied his legs at ankle and thigh, then his hands together in front of him and wound the rope around his chest.

Ezekiel watched helplessly as the guards picked Stone up by the ropes, dragging him across the floor. The scholar’s head hung down, his eyes closed, but he could see him taking shuddering breaths and hear the soft wheezing.

“Let ‘em go, mates!” he yelled angrily, shaking his chains. “Let ‘em go ya bloody bastards!!”

The thief kept up a litany of “No, no, no…” as Jake was dragged to the trough of water and then held down facefirst. 

It took a few moments before Jake breathed in, and when he did the cold water surged down his throat and into his lungs and he bucked against the hands that held him down. He couldn’t get a grip on either the trough or the ground with his hands and ankles tied, so he kicked out with both feet, catching something that yielded softly, probably someone’s stomach. The hands on his shoulders and arms tightened and Jake saw stars bursting behind his eyes as he continued to choke.

Just before he blacked out he was abruptly jerked back and thrown to the ground. He landed hard on his side and started to cough and wheeze as he tried desperately to suck in oxygen. 

Faintly he heard Jones yelling and swearing, the thief turning the air blue with creative American and Aussie curses. He squinted as he opened his eyes, blinking as water ran into them. He saw hands coming for him again and he tried to jerk away; he was unsuccessful. They dragged him again, and he knew that the ring of fire was the next torment.

“Let me go!” he snarled, wriggling as much as he could. The fear of the fire was strong enough to flood him with adrenalin and his captors had a hard time keeping him still. When they set him down in the center of the sigils, he rolled off to the side. They pulled him back and he used the momentum to roll off the other side.

Confusion seemed to ripple through the ranks even though not one of the mindless men moved an inch. Jake could sense their uncertainty as they stood there, looking down at him. He used the time to struggle harder, knowing it wouldn’t take long before someone or something instructed them further.

With Jones cheering him on, he heaved at the ropes as hard as he could, grunting and growling through clenched teeth as the muscles in his arms bulged at the strain. Little by little he felt the strands give way but before they snapped fully, he heard Jones yelling out.

With only that little bit of warning Jake looked up and saw the butt end of a wooden staff flying directly at his face. He whipped his head to the side but wasn’t able to avoid it completely. It slammed into his temple and his head flew back, ringing off of the stone floor.

“ _JAKE!!_ ”

The group of guards then grabbed the stunned scholar again and pulled him to the center of the writings, the scarlet robed figure overseeing them. Jake dimly felt them drop him onto the ground and then step back, the chanting starting up again in the background.

Abruptly he felt the searing rush of heat explode around him. It startled him even though he’d been expecting it, and he howled in fear and pain, his back arching as he tried to curl his legs in. A finger of flame licked along his bicep and ribs and he screamed again at the blistering agony. Another slid across his abdomen, stealing his breath.

Almost as soon as it started and an eternity later, the fire died down to embers that glowed angrily in the stone floor.

“Jake….” Ezekiel whined, seeing the always strong man shaking and moaning on the ground.

The cessation of heat was a hugely welcome relief and Jake reveled in it, even as his body trembled with the pain of the burns. He whimpered softly as he felt himself being dragged yet again. His back slid over the embers and he yelped at the additional burning pain but his captors, as always, silently ignored him.

Ezekiel bit his lip as he saw them start to drag Jake into the bone pit, hoping against hope that the mostly unconscious scholar would just pass out. He watched as the men laid him out on the floor of the pit, his back resting on the skulls. His wish was ignored, of course; Jake Stone was just too inherently stubborn to stay out for long. He was sharply observing the other man’s face when he saw Jake open his eyes a little, then stare upwards for a while.

“Jake? You in there?”

Jake drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, a soft moan whispering from his lips every few breaths. Finally he was able to gather himself and try to come back. The pain in his entire body made him shy back a couple of times but then he just bulled through it, managing to crack his eyes open.

The darkness above him was the first thing he registered, that and the chanting, again. Distantly he wondered if they ever shut up. Then he heard his name being called and he blinked, then slowly raised his eyes. He focused first on the thief, still chained to the wall but watching him intently. He raised his brows and opened his mouth but nothing came out but a croaking moan.

“Easy, mate,” Ezekiel said. “We’re gonna get you out of this. I dunno exactly how…” he finished in a mutter. He heard Jake make a coughing noise but then realized it had been a weak chuckle. “Not so damned funny, man. This is a bit of a fix you got us in. I’m _so_ gonna kick your ass when we get out of here.”

Stone smiled a little at the familiar comment, his eyes closing for a moment. Then he felt the odd lumps that he was lying on and his eyes sprang open again. He stared determinedly at the darkness above him, trying to convince his brain that he wasn’t where he thought he was, but his damned perfect peripheral vision picked out the rib cages and scapulas, tibia, fibulas, and metatarsals close enough to reach out and grab him.

He clenched his eyes closed again and started reciting the works, in alphabetical order, of randomly selected philosophers Francis of Assisi, Richard Kilvington, Urso of Strausbourg and Judah ben Moses of Rome. The latter segued into verses of The Divine Comedy, then into Dante, which he quickly shied away from. He tried to recite the Great Book of Letters by Henry Suso in German, but the specters of the bones so close to him made him trip over his words.

Jones heard Jake muttering and tried to follow, but he was naming off lists of things the thief had never heard of, until the name Dante was uttered. The tone changed and suddenly the scholar was speaking in German, and Jones knew he was trying his best to keep his mind focused on something other than the bones.

It was an admirably long time, at least four hours if his internal clock was right, and it almost always was, before Jake’s voice started to crack. Either by the dryness of his throat or the proximity of the bones, or both, Ezekiel didn’t know, but the German was distinctly stuttering.

He heard it when Jake gasped in a breath, a choked sob coming a few moments later.

He couldn’t keep the lineages straight, the dates and birthplaces all scrambling in his head. He scrunched his eyes closed again until the muscles of his cheeks twitched. Images of the bones filtered into his mind, creeping in from the edges to dominate his thoughts. Jake tried to use the pain of the hard skulls _rocks, not skulls, rocks!!_ against his back, shoving against the burns across his shoulders, but it didn’t work for long.

Holding his breath didn’t distract him, and it only hurt more as he gasped for air. A soft keen came from between his clenched teeth and his hands balled into fists as he started to panic. His heart raced as he took in breath after breath, faster and faster and faster. Finally too light-headed to concentrate, he drifted for a bit, but he just came back to the same place.

Jones started to worry as the strained and panicked sound wobbled off and the scholar was silent. But too soon, the sound came back, the soft wailing of a badly wounded animal near death that felt the predators all around just waiting to rend it to pieces. His heart shattered to hear the sound coming from his larger-than-life friend, knowing that the torture he was enduring was taking him to his last breaths.

There was movement at the side of the room and for a moment he thought the black robed guards were heading for him. Three of them entered the pit but the rest split off.

“No. No, no you _bloody bastards!_ ” Jones yelled angrily, trying to hide his fear. “Leave me alone! _Get away from me!_ ”

While the trio of black robed figures dragged the scholar out of his sight, the scarlet-robed man and the rest of the group advanced on him. Pointing at the thief with his staff, the one man who seemed to have any mind of his own stood back and watched as the followers grabbed onto Jones. They released him from the manacles that held him to the wall, but before he could do anything about the collar they had fastened his hands together with the same tough rope that they’d tied Jake with.

Fearing that his turn to be tortured was next, he started to pull on the chain that two of the black robes held, trying to body-slam his way out of the crowd. He was grabbed again, this time by the upper arms, and forced to walk.

More chanting came from in front of him, and he could barely make out the words interspersed with screams:

“…. Oh deities of our ancestors, hear us!  
We consecrate this body, purged of pain,  
_Scream_  
purged of mind,  
purged of blood.  
_Scream!_  
Come upon him and bring him over to us!  
By the power of the Blood Chalice,  
_SCREAM!!_  
let the demons feast and the dead rise!” 

__Following the scarlet robed man, the guards marched him down the aisle between the granite seats, approaching the stage. Ezekiel gasped as he saw what they’d done to his friend._ _

__………………….._ _

__Cassandra’s eyes darted from side to side, even though she kept her head facing the front. Arms wrapped in her sleeves, she mouthed along silently as she listened to the file of women chanting as they walked further and further into the deep cavern. They’d been walking for what seemed to her to be an hour or more, the tunnel twisting this way and that and branching out randomly._ _

__Hoping that at the end of the tunnel they would find the errant Librarians, and that Jenkins was right about the door being able to open up and rescue them, she didn’t pay much attention to the confusion of the path. Each of the Amazons did though. With the ease of long training and experience, they would be able to easily find their way back out, as well as be able to figure out where they were and which way to go if they happened to find themselves somewhere in the middle._ _

__In time the tunnel widened and she found herself on a walkway around a deep cavern. She managed to get a glance down and did her best not to flinch as she heard Ezekiel’s voice yelling out. Screams rent the air and her fingernails pressed bloody crescents into her palms as she clenched her fists hard. The air around her changed and she could almost feel the Amazons bristling as they heard the screams and caught the scent of blood and ash._ _

__Continuing down the staircase, the women reached the ground floor, coming up behind the stage. Cassandra cringed as she saw the body of a man laid out on the alter, his wrists and ankles raw and bloody, his chest an angry red with what looked like burns across his abdomen and arm. Her eyes traveled up and saw the identity of the man, and cried out when she saw that it was Jake._ _

__………………….._ _

__Jake was lying on his back on a black marble alter, his hands and feet bound to the four corners, his body shaking with great heaves that slowly, _slowly_ receded. He looked to be unconscious, his eyes closed and his head lolling to one side._ _

__Blood was seeping from a long cut on the inside of both of his biceps, continuing down across the crease of his elbows to his wrists. There was also blood darkening the denim of his jeans from what looked to be slashes across the top of each thigh._ _

__The blood flowed down the slight inclines of the alter to drip into a black, ruby encrusted chalice that sat on a golden dais. It was almost half full._ _

__A choked off scream caught Ezekiel’s attention and he looked up, startled. Cassandra stood in a group of women in white robes in front of him; he’d been so intent on trying to figure out if Jake was even still alive now to notice that the women had entered the chamber._ _

__His eyes went round as the women turned and grabbed her from their midst, pulling her to the front of the group. She struggled against their hands, but it was futile as they held her still._ _

__“What is this!?” the woman in the red sash cried out, looking at her. “I do not know you! You are not one of the Acolytes! Hold her!” She pointed to the side with her finger and they moved Cassandra closer to Ezekiel. They looked at one another with fear on their faces but said nothing, turning back to watch the rite, hoping that the Amazons would be able to save them all._ _

__Cassandra saw that the Amazons were indeed moving; they staggered their movements, but they seemed intent on circling the group. Ezekiel took the opportunity to start yelling again._ _

__“Oy! Let ‘im go, damn you! Bugger off, you bunch of bloody cunts!” He nearly choked as the chain to his collar was yanked hard, but he kept up with the insults._ _

__The woman in scarlet started to drone in a different language, holding her hands up to the sky, the Blood Chalice in her hands. Then she switched back to English:_ _

__“Mother Mary of the White Cloak,  
Give to your daughters that which we seek!  
Let the blood of this man be mixed with the blood of our ancestors,  
Bind him to us in the final moments of his death!  
Give him to us as we have given ourselves to you!” 

__

__

__At that moment the Amazons flew into a frenzy of motion. They flung their white robes off, throwing them into the faces of the female acolytes and blinding many of them. Those who stood to fight were swiftly cut down or clubbed senseless, none of them a match for the furious Amazons._ _

__The woman at the head of the alter shrieked and threw the Blood Chalice toward Andromeda, who ducked out of the way of the red spray. Lykopis lunged in and stabbed the woman through the stomach, twisting the long knife up into her heart and letting her fall limply from the blade. The men and women holding the other two Librarians suddenly released their hold, dropping to the floor as Alcinoe cut them down with her sword._ _

__Cassandra and Ezekiel were shaking with fear, tears running down their cheeks as the shock of the last few moments caught up with them. Then they looked at Jake, lying pale and lifeless on the alter and knew he was dying._ _


	4. Bringing Jake Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short chapter, I wanted to get this posted before my computer battery craps out on me ;) Besides, it ends well where it is.

It took the Amazons rushing toward the alter to shock both Cassandra and Ezekiel into movement.

“Jake!” Cassandra breathed as she neared. She held her hands just above him, not knowing where she could touch him that wouldn’t cause him pain.

“Cassandra Cillian!” Lykopis snapped, making the young Librarian’s head shoot up. “He will not feel anything right now, and we must get him free and bind up his wounds. Help us!”

The words goaded her into action and she took the knife handed to her and carefully sawed at the ropes holding Jake’s left ankle. When all of the ropes were severed, the five of them lifted his limp body from the alter and eased him to the ground. 

Andromeda and Lykopis swiftly ripped their robes into strips as Alcinoe instructed the other two to put pressure on the two deep slashes on the tops of Jake’s thighs. Ezekiel, somewhat still in shock, obeyed instantly, followed a little more slowly by Cassandra. Blood slowly seeped between their fingers as they pressed.

While the two Librarians held pressure on his legs, Alcinoe quickly twined strips of the robes around Jake’s arms, thicker bandages tied tightly against his wrists. When she’d finished with that, she put pressure bandages on each thigh and wrapped them tightly as well.

The other two Amazons had disappeared while they were tending to Jake, only to return just moments after they’d finished with two long lengths of wood. “This will serve for a litter. It will not be be pretty, but it will work,” Lykopis said, setting them down on the ground. Quicker than Cassandra could imagine, they had three more of the robes stripped from the Acolytes bodies and tied securely to the staffs, creating a sturdy, if rough looking, litter to carry the wounded Librarian on.

Jake uttered a soft moan as they rolled him onto his side and Cassandra held his head, brushing his hair back gently as they laid him out on the litter. “It’s okay, Jake,” she whispered, bending close to his sweaty forehead. “It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, okay?” She bit her lip when she didn’t receive any response.

Andromeda and Lykopis knelt at either end of the litter and grabbed ahold of the handles, lifting swiftly but carefully. Cassandra was dialing Jenkins and as soon as he answered, she blurted, “Open the door quick Jake’s hurt so you have to open the door now reallyfasthurry!!”

A moment later a blue light flashed and a doorway appeared, the door already opening. “Miss Cillian! My ladies, bring him in posthaste!” Jenkins urged. He waved them through, patting Ezekiel on the back as he passed last. “Mr. Jones, it is so good to see you well.”

They weren’t surprised to see that the Library chose to open the door into the infirmary. The Amazons laid the pallet on the edge of a padded table, easing Jake onto it gently. This time he didn’t make a sound.

“My word!” Jenkins exclaimed as he saw Jake. “What happened?”

“Explanations can wait,” Lykopis snapped, hurrying to the medical cabinet. “His wounds must be tended now!”

“Of course.” Jenkins shook himself out of his stupor and helped Alcinoe. Cassandra led Jones to another cot, urging him to sit down. He obeyed, but stiffly, his attention riveted to the badly wounded Librarian. 

“He’s gonna, he’s gonna die,” he whispered brokenly, the words barely audible. “We…we… We saw… We saw another man, they did this to him… And he died, they brought him back, but he _died_.”

“No, Ezekiel,” Cassandra shook her head almost angrily. “He is _not_ going to die. He’s going to be alright. Jenkins is going to make sure of that. The Library can help!”

The two of them sat on the edge of the bed, Jones too keyed up and shocky to lay down. Cassandra wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and sat beside him, most of her attention on the others as they cared for Jake.

Jenkins stayed back and to the side, watching as the Amazons moved together as a unit. Andromeda stood by with the supplies in front of her, handing Alcinoe whatever she needed with the skill of a practiced nurse. Lykopis handled Jake, holding his arm at the proper angle and stilling him when he twitched.

The bandage was carefully unwound from one of Jake’s arms. Blood started to flow again as Alcinoe flushed the wound to clean it, examining it closely to make sure no debris was left behind to hamper healing. She placed stitches in the deeper areas by his wrist and elbow, then covered the entire slash with a bandage and wrapped it securely with gauze, then did the same with the other arm.

By this time Jake was beginning to stir, his fingers twitching as Lykopis held his wrists. Cassandra stood and eased closer, watching as his eyelids started to flutter. He moved his head to the side a little and moaned, his brows furrowing.

“It’s okay, Jake,” she said, craning her head to see past the tall Amazons. “You’re safe now.”

Jake heard the words from a distance, filtering in and out of his brain. Muzzily, he wondered why it was taking him such effort to concentrate, but then that thought wandered away too. The last thing he remembered was agonizing pain in his arms and legs, a weakness so profound that he could hardly think or move, and then a terrifying fade into nothingness.

He couldn’t see. He heard murmuring voices and felt people by his side, but all around him was a cloying darkness that he was unable to see through.

Oh.

He struggled to open his eyes, concentrating hard. Light pierced his vision as he finally managed to pry his eyes open a little and he gasped at the shooting pain in his head, scrunching his eyes shut again.

“Easy, scholar,” he heard one of the Amazons say. “You have been struck hard on the head,” “You have a concussion…” Her voice and Jenkins’ spoke together and it took a distressing amount of time for him to figure out what they meant.

All in all he figured he didn’t want to move anytime soon.

He was more careful as he opened his eyes a second time, his bright blue orbs moving back and forth as he identified the people around him.

“You have been unconscious while we tended the wounds on your arms, young one, but there are deeper wounds on your legs that need tending as well,” Alcinoe said, moving closer to him. “I dare not give you anything for the pain for fear that you will not awaken from it.” His brows drew down again.

“…s…'kay…” he rasped, his voice already tight with pain. “..know…yer…helpin’…” was all he could manage before shutting his eyes again. He felt hands slide into his, one small and delicate, the other much larger. Cassie and Jenkins. He hoped Ezekiel was okay.

“We’re all right here, mate,” came the soft reply, as if he’d said it out loud. A firm but gentle hand rested on the curve of his neck and shoulder.

The Amazons moved their attention down to his legs, which throbbed with each beat of his heart. He felt a scissors slide up his left calf; it kind of tickled and he tried to hold onto that feeling. Further up it became tighter as the blade slid along the outside of his thigh. 

Alcinoe cut through the denim with ease, pleased that her young charge was handling his pain so well and not fighting against her. She’d had even Amazons fight her ministrations and it always ended badly. So far he was just holding firmly to his companions’ hands. The bandage she cut away carefully, feeling him tense under her hands as some of the pressure was released. She finished cutting all the way through the waistband of the jeans and carefully peeled them back, easing the bandage off of the wound.

“This will need to be cleaned, so prepare yourself,” she said, and was answered by a huff.

“How…’zactly…d’ya rec..commend…I do that?” he gasped. 

“Well, I’m sure that I can be of use to you in that regard, Mr. Stone,” Jenkins said, proceeding to start a monologue about western beliefs toward the Grecian goddesses versus Roman, an argument that they’d been embroiled in just before this latest quest. He could tell that Jake was listening avidly, his eyes boring into the older mans’ in his attempts to concentrate.

Jake was so attentive to the expostulation that Jenkins was taken by surprise when he bucked on the table, his jaw clenched as a strangled moan came from his throat. Looking down, he saw Lykopis holding his leg firmly to the table, one hand on his knee and the other on his hip as Alcinoe probed the wound, flushing it with saline and disinfectant. He and Ezekiel both held Jake’s shoulders to the mattress as he writhed, his head tossing back and forth. 

Jake had managed to concentrate so thoroughly on Jenkins that the sudden explosion of agony in his leg took his breath away. He felt hands on him, holding him down, and heard the droning chants in the background again. Fire licked across his legs and up both arms and he struggled to free himself, desperate to get away from the pain. He cried out as more liquid fire was poured into the wound on his leg.

" _NoNoNonononononoooo!_ "

The Librarians were unprepared for Jake’s scream; Cassandra flinched back from the raw pain in his voice, but they grimly held onto him. His back arched and he tried to twist away from them, but Andromeda added her significant strength to theirs and Lykopis’ to hold him down.

Ezekiel’s heart clenched again as he heard his friend’s quiet sob, watching as tears slid down his cheeks into the hair at his temples. He couldn’t imagine the pain Jake was going through.

As suddenly as he fought, Jake collapsed. Andromeda pushed Ezekiel back as she grasped Jake’s head, bending down to listen. “He’s breathing,” she said, and Jones started to breathe again as well.

The rest of the treatment went without interruption, and by the end, Jake was bandaged to within an inch of his life: white bandages twined up his arms from his wrists to the top of his biceps and around each thigh, another pad was taped to his abdomen where Alcinoe had treated the burn there and he was lying on a large sheet of gauze covered with aloe, menthol and other cooling gels for the burns across his shoulders.

They moved him carefully to a more comfortable bed, propping him up on a pile of pillows and covering him with a light sheet. Jenkins watched as both Cassandra and Ezekiel sat down in the chairs at the side of the bed, looking determined to stay until Jake was fully healed.

“We shall leave you two with your companion,” Andromeda said quietly as Alcinoe made one final check. “Please call out if he has need of us.”

They nodded absently, their attention riveted to their friend. Jenkins and the Amazons quietly retreated, easing the door to the infirmary closed.


	5. Please Don't Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake is back at the Library, but he isn't out of the woods just yet.

Jake floated in uncomfortable darkness for a while, he had no way of telling how long. Voices and sounds drifted in and out and then came back again. He heard his name a few times, but was too exhausted to respond.

Gradually he became aware of things in the darkness with him. Concentrating, he started to make out the shapes as they moved, and then regretted trying as he saw skeletons walking next to him, their movements jerky and clumsy.

He tried to back away from them but bumped into something. Swirling around, he saw bony eye sockets staring back at him, a skeletal hand reaching for his shoulder.

He screamed.

Cassandra jerked at the sound, her head whipping up. She’d accidentally fallen asleep next to Jake, and from the startled look on Jones’ face, he’d done the same. A whimper caught their attention again and they looked toward Stone, who was twisting on the bed, his hands alternately grabbing at the sheets and then pushing them away, his legs moving restlessly.

“Shhhh, Jake… You’re safe. You’re going to be okay,” Cassandra whispered as she bent near, one hand on his and the other on his forehead, smoothing back his sweaty hair. His eyes were clenched shut and his face twisted, caught in his nightmare.

The skeletons came closer, and he could see them more clearly now; the flames in the far distance were growing and coming closer. Flickering light danced off of the bony figures and Jake was disturbed to see that not all of them were complete. Some lacked an arm, or a hand, others lacked a head.

They grabbed onto him, their grips tight and painful around his wrists and forearms. Another grabbed onto his shoulder and he turned his head to see the skull leering at him as maggots fell out of it’s mouth. He tried to pull away and the skeletons fell apart as he tugged. The hands remained clenched around his wrist and arm but it came apart at the elbow. As he watched, the skeleton began to crumple and then it exploded into bone dust that flew into his face.

“No…. nonono let go of me….let goooo…” Cassie heard Jake plead, and surprised, she let go of his hand and he seemed to settle a little.

The bony fingers retracted as the corpse released him and Jake jumped back, away from the pile of dust. Able to take a deep breath, he looked around. He was in the same cavern as before, but the walls were closer and they throbbed, almost like they were breathing. Firelight flickered off the walls and in some places, it glistened off of trickles of blood. The same droning, maddening chants bounced off of the walls and plagued Jake unendingly.

Along one wall hung the bodies of about a dozen men, all in varying states of decay. The ones closest were nearly bones themselves, and Stone jerked back when one of them twitched and seemed to reach for him. Further down the line the bodies were less decomposed until he got to the second to last and recognized it.

“Cledwyn!” he gasped, the dirty beard and longish, sandy brown hair easily recognizable. The man turned his head and one eye fixed on the scholar, the other already rotted and fallen out.

Cassie heard the name and frowned. “Cled…wyn?” she questioned, her eyes rising to look at Jones, who was biting on his lower lip. He looked up at her and nodded slightly.

“Cledwyn, he was in the cells with us,” he explained. “They took him, and tortured him… He died, but then he came back for Stone.”

“What do you mean, he died and then…came back?” she asked in confusion.

“I don’t know how they did it. They did….everything to him that they did to Jake, but the end… We heard him screaming, and then nothing. He couldn’t have lived, not through that and then come back like nothing was wrong.” His voice faded almost to nothing at the end. “He came back with the others and… And they tortured Jake.”

Jake was panting shallowly between them, and they turned their attention to the scholar. Their friend. Cassandra dampened a cloth and smoothed it over his forehead as Jones stood and turned the overhead fan on low. Then, they sat and watched, unable to do anything else.

Jake was staring, dumbfounded, as Cledwyn’s hand reached out for him. Unable to move, he watched with horror as the hand neared, the rotting flesh falling off of the bone and dripping with thick blood. The hand came up to his face and he felt something smear across his cheek before he was able to jerk away with a scream.

The last person in the line of hanging bodies turned his face toward Stone and opened his mouth but nothing came out. Jake’s heart clenched painfully as he looked at Ezekiel hanging on the wall. Something shifted and then he saw, with horror, the rest of the team; Cassandra, Eve, Flynn and Jenkins, and then…himself. His entire body was covered in blood, dripping down his arms and legs, and he grunted in surprise as pain suddenly shot down his arms.

Jake looked down to see himself standing in a widening pool of blood that was dripping off his fingertips and from the hem of his soaked jeans. Agony throbbed through him with each beat of his heart, and his stomach and back burned.

Staggering to the side, he ran into a wall and slumped against it, somehow still on his feet as he stared in horror at the gruesome display of corpses on the wall. Suddenly the wall dissolved and he fell sideways into a huge hole. The wind was knocked out of his lungs and he wheezed as he tried to gasp in enough oxygen.

“That’s it, we need Alcinoe,” Ezekiel said after watching Jake’s condition continue to deteriorate over the last few hours. He’d gone from nightmares in which he tossed and whimpered or cried out, to stillness, until now as he started to pant and sweat profusely.

“I think you’re right,” Cassandra agreed, and Jones was already on his feet and running out of the room. Moments later, Jenkins and the Amazons hurried into the room as if they had been waiting right outside the door.

“They were right outside,” Jones said as he peeked around Andromeda.

Alcinoe went straight to Jacob’s bedside and bent over, one hand on his forehead as she concentrated. “He is developing a frightening fever,” she said, straightening. Moving down, she lifted the sheet over his thighs and bent over, sniffing. “There is infection in the wounds, I can smell it,” she said, standing once again. “I will have to clean them again. This will not be as pleasant as before,” she warned.

“Pleasant?!?” Ezekiel yelped. “You call that _pleasant??_ ”

Alcinoe gave him a look and he stopped, but with difficulty.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she said. “With apologies, perhaps the young ones should go outside and rest. Perhaps take to their rooms for a few hours for a proper sleep.”

Jenkins nodded his agreement, but Cassandra and Jones vehemently denied it. “No. No, I’m not leaving. He went through hell for me and I’m staying,” Ezekiel said. Cassandra stepped closer to the thief and grabbed his arm. “Me, too.”

“Very well,” Andromeda sighed. “But you must not interfere, and only do something if we tell you to.”

Glancing at each other, they nodded.

After terse negotiations of conduct, Cassandra assisted Alcinoe in readying sterile instruments as Jenkins and the others adjusted Jake on the bed until he was lying flat, new sheets around him and thick towels under his legs in preparation. Bowls of sterile water were placed on the nightstand, and a tray of instruments was laid on the bed next to Jake’s legs.

“I will outline what I am going to do so that you are all ready,” Alcinoe stated, looking into Cassie and Ezekiel’s eyes. “First I need to cut away the bandages, and the wounds will undoubtedly be infected; they will smell bad, and may be filled with pus.” 

Jones shuddered.

“I will need to open the wounds and flush them with water, and possibly remove dead tissue if it’s gotten that bad. Then I will flush again with the water, and then the antiseptic. That part may be the most painful for young Jacob. After that I will pack the wounds and wrap them. I will stitch them closed later, after I am sure the infection is gone.”

The two young Librarians looked decidedly green but Cassandra asked, “Why will it be painful? Don’t you have anesthetic?”

“We cannot risk it,” Lykopis interjected. “He is too weak, and putting him further under is too dangerous. It is well that he is unconscious now.”

Alcinoe started again by slipping the scissors under the bandages and carefully peeling them back. She was right about the smell and Jones backed up, his hand over his nose; the infection smelled foul, as if something was decaying. 

Jake tumbled into a burning pit of skulls and bones, each skeleton reaching for him with flaming hands. They wrapped themselves around his arms and legs, the fire racing along his limbs all the way to his core. His spine burned and it felt like each nerve pathway was a river of lava.

He bucked against his restraints but they held him tightly, and he turned his head only to see all of the Librarians holding him down, glowing, as their bodies burned right in front of his eyes.

Treating the deep lacerations took hours as the Amazon cleaned each wound meticulously, then packed it and re-wrapped it. She was right about the pain, too. It took all of them to hold Jake still enough for Alcinoe to treat him. Even as a scholar, Jake was formidably strong, an attribute not lost on the Amazons.

Jake pulled and twisted, the veins standing out in his neck and temples as he fought them, and they could feel the fever radiating off of him. In the few moments that he was still, they bathed his face, neck and shoulders with cool cloths, only to have to push him back down into the mattress as he started to buck.

Finally Alcinoe stepped back and swiped an arm across her brow. Cassandra offered her and the others glasses of ice water which they accepted gratefully.

The healer looked down at Stone and shook her head. “His fever is not abating,” she said worriedly. “It is, in fact, growing. This, I do not like.”

“What does that mean?” Ezekiel asked, biting his lower lip.

“It means that I fear the blade used, or the chalice, or the ritual itself…something, was tainted. He should be resting comfortably, but he is not.”

They all looked down at Jake, who was panting hard, wheezing with each breath. His skin was slick with sweat and he shifted constantly, his face twisted in pain.

“Is he going to be okay?” Cassandra breathed, almost not wanting to hear the answer.

“I do not know,” the Amazon admitted quietly. “I do know that we must watch him now, more closely than before. If the fever rises, or if he does not take fluids, he will be in more danger than he is now.”

None of them asked what he would be in danger of.

For the next hour they watched Jake closely, worrying as his fever climbed higher and higher until he was lying flat on his back, sweat dripping off of him. They’d used cold water with a fan blowing directly on him, and then finally bags of ice around him, but nothing was working.

His breathing was so shallow they could barely hear it. When they held his hand, he didn’t react at all. He couldn’t swallow, so he couldn’t drink any of the iced water they tried to give him.

“He’s slipping away,” Andromeda murmured sadly.

“No…no please,” Cassandra whispered, tears shining in her eyes as she heard the Amazon’s soft words. “You have to do something, there has to be _something_ you can do…?”

The Librarians watched as the Amazons shared a look, then went to a corner of the room to confer. 

_“What about…_ ”

“…know _it’s sacred..!_ ”

“… _only chance…_ ”

“… _have to try…”_

Cassandra and Ezekiel could only catch bits of the hurried but intense conversation. They glanced at Jenkins but he shrugged, not knowing what the women were talking about. A sharp gasp drew their attention back to the bed.

Jake’s eyes were open but glazed and he slowly breathed out the gasp, then his chest was still.

“He’s not breathing!” Ezekiel yelped, rushing to his friend. He shook the scholar but to no avail; Jake was limp and unresponsive. “Jake! _Jake!!!_ ”

“ _Please help him!!_ ,” Cassie implored the Amazons, grasping onto Lykopis’ wrist. She was openly crying now, tears running down her cheeks.

The Amazon gave Alcinoe and Andromeda a sharp look, and the two reluctantly nodded. Reaching into her belt pouch, she withdrew a small item wrapped in wax cloth. Reverently unwrapping it, the Librarians saw a small, glowing piece of amber.

“What….what is that?” Ezekiel asked in a hushed tone, gulping down his sobs.

Lykopis handed the small bundle to Alcinoe, who bowed her head over it for a moment before bending over Stone and opening his mouth, placing a small bit of it on his tongue.

“What _is_ that?” Cassandra asked this time.

It was Jenkins who answered after a solemn bow to the Amazons. “That, my friends, was Ambrosia.”


	6. Nectar of the Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What does the Nectar do? Will it help Jake? Or will it kill him?

“Ambrosia?” Cassandra squeaked as they all waited with bated breath for a change in Jake.

“It has healing powers,” Alcinoe said. “It responds only to the fiercest of warriors, and only for a just reason.”

“Meaning…it might not work?” Jones asked reluctantly, glancing up and then back down quickly, as if afraid to take his eyes off of the scholar.

“We can only wait.”

“Please, Jake,” Cassandra implored, leaning close. “Please…you can do this, please wake up!” The two youngest Librarians sat on either side of the bed, their fingers twined with Jake’s as they waited, their grips getting tighter as the moments passed by.

“He’s…he’s breathing!” Ezekiel was the first to see it. Jake’s chest rose and fell in stuttering jerks before easing into a smoother rhythm. “He’s breathing!!”

Jenkins’ shoulders relaxed minutely and he closed his eyes, nodding once at the Amazons. “I thank you for your aid,” he said quietly. “I know how rare this is.”

“We will leave you now,” Lykopis said, giving Jake one more glance. “We will remain in the Library for some time to make sure your young Librarian will live. Only call out and we will come with haste.”

With those words, the Amazons retreated, closing the door behind them. Cassandra couldn’t hold it in anymore; she folded over her hand and Jake’s, her shoulders shaking. Soft whimpers came from her huddled form, and Jenkins put his hands on her shoulders.

“There, there, Miss Cillian,” he said. “Our intrepid Mr. Stone will be on his feet in no time.”

“What was that that they gave him, mate?” Ezekiel asked, finally daring to look up for more than a split second.

Jenkins drew in a breath and sat down on the edge of the bed beside Cassandra’s chair. “That was Ambrosia, Mr. Jones. Nectar of the Gods,” he replied. “It is said that it gives one immortality, but that only a God can partake of it. Mere mortals will burn up with the power of it.”

“ _What!?_ ” Jones yelped. “It’s gonna kill him! You gotta get it out of him!”

Jenkins rose as Ezekiel jumped up, reaching a hand over to still the thief from apparently rolling Jake onto his stomach and pounding on his back. “Calm down, Mr. Jones. It is also said that magicians can eat Ambrosia and not sicken as men do. Furthermore, they used such a very little bit of it. I am hoping that the minute amount, along with Mr. Stone’s association with the Library and his own inherent strength, will swing the scales in his favor.”

“I think it’s working,” Cassandra ventured, having raised her head and was now watching Jake like a hawk. A little color had come back into his cheeks, and it seemed he rested a little more easily. Using the cool cloths from before, Cassandra gently washed his face and neck, reassured when the fever sweat didn’t immediately return. She continued across his shoulders and chest to the wrapping around the burns on his stomach and sides.

“He’s gonna be alright,” Ezekiel said softly, as if finally believing it. He slumped down into the chair in relief, letting out a pent-up sigh. “He’s gonna be alright.”

Jake moaned softly, a mere huff of sound, moving his head just an fraction on the pillow. All three heads jerked toward him, watching closely, but he didn’t make any other movement. That little bit of life, however, greatly reassured them that he would get well again.

For the rest of that night and the following days Jones, Cassandra and Jenkins traded off every few hours as they tried to get some sleep themselves. Jones in particular needed more rest than he took, but there was no denying that the experience had shaken the young thief, and until Jake woke and was coherent, he wouldn’t be able to relax.

They had watched the scholar as he slept, Alcinoe checking in once in a while. Each time she came in she helped Jake drink a little water; Jenkins would hold him upright as she dripped a little water past his lips, stroking his throat to make sure he swallowed. It was difficult each time to go slow enough that Jake didn’t aspirate the water, but Jenkins held him securely, his head resting on the larger man’s shoulder.

Alcinoe also inspected his injuries each time she came in. Sometimes Jake would be deep enough under to not feel anything, but most of the time he seemed to drift just on the edge of consciousness. Cassandra tried to be at the scholar’s side so that she could soothe him when the bandages were pulled back and the wounds on his arms and legs cleaned. The pain seemed to seep into his subconscious, and he moaned, weakly trying to get away but Cassie held his hands in hers, stroking his fever hot forehead. 

The fever hung on for another day, falling enough to raise everyone’s hopes only to rise again. During those times Jones would usually stay with Stone, quietly chattering non-stop as he kept replacing the cool cloths over Jake’s over-heated body. The burns on his back seemed particularly troublesome, as Jake would wriggle as if trying to roll onto his side. Ezekiel fetched Jenkins once to help him roll Stone, and when propped on his side, his head on a rolled up pillow, the scholar whimpered once and then his shoulders relaxed and he seemed to sink further into sleep.

On the third morning Alcinoe checked on her patient and pronounced the wounds free of infection and Jake free of fever, which made everyone sigh with relief. 

It wasn’t until late into the third night that Jake made any indication of waking. It was on Jones’ watch, and at first, he didn’t think much of it. Stone had been somewhat fitful all day, twitching or moving restlessly, just a little at a time, so when he opened his eyes it wasn’t noticed right away.

Exhaustion pulled at him but he stubbornly kept his eyes open, if only a little. Shifting them to the side, he saw Jones sitting beside him, slouched in a comfortable chair with a tablet in his lap. He watched the thief tiredly for a minute before a shriek sounded beside him.

“ _Jake!!!_ ”

His head jerked and he moaned softly at the sudden spike of pain that stabbed through his skull. Rolling his eyes to his other side, he saw Cassandra standing by the bed in the middle of clapping her hands, a surprised and then horrified look on her face as she saw him wince. 

“You’re awake _imsosorry!_ ”

He tried to reply but his throat caught, resulting in a painful squawk instead.

“Oh jeez, mate!” came the accented voice from his other side, and he heard movement. “Here, have a little.” A glass suddenly appeared in front of his face and he jerked in surprise. Letting Jones hold the glass, he sipped down a little of the cold water and then nodded, letting his head drop back onto the pillow.

“Thanks,” he rasped tiredly.

“You’re alive!” she exclaimed, her hands clasped as she bounced up and down a few times. “You’re okay!”

“I w-wasn’t…?” His voice was a painful parody of his normal whiskey smooth drawl.

“Um…” Her happiness turned to uncertainty, and Jake turned his head toward Ezekiel, hoping for a clearer answer.

“It was rough, mate,” the thief admitted reluctantly. “You… You _did_ nearly die on us, and I, I… I don’t want that to ever happen again.”

A gentle weight slid onto the bed next to him and he groaned without meaning to. 

“Oh! Sorry! Sorry!” Cassandra started to jump off of the mattress but he managed to grab her hand, biting back the moan.

“Nodont…” he breathed. “St…stay? ’N….talk t’ me?” His eyes flicked back and forth between the other two and they realized he wanted both of them to stay. 

“Well, Jones has been talking your ear off for the last couple of days,” she said cheekily, settling back onto the bed carefully. “I’m surprised you want him to talk at all!”

“Hey, now!” came the retort, and Jake smiled a little at the familiar banter. Their voices slowly moved to the back of his mind as he tried to remember what had happened.

He remembered their capture of course, then meeting Cledwyn and being forced to watch and listen to what the cult members had done to him. And then he remembered the man coming up to him as he held onto the bars of the cell and seeing utter blankness in the man’s eyes. 

Stone blinked and shuddered a little at the memory.

“You okay, mate?” Jones asked, and Jake nodded by habit, groaning at the pain in his head.

“Okay…maybe…maybe I’m not,” he whispered, lifting his hand to press against the side of his head. The movement was stiff and awkward and his brows drew down, looking at his arm. It was bandaged from his wrist all the way up to his bicep, as was his other arm, and he frowned harder. “W-what…?”

Cassandra’s hand reached out for his wrist, slowly easing his arm back down. “Do you remember what happened?” she asked softly.

“I…I,” he stammered. “I remember…the flash of light, and then…then Jones and I were in…in a cave.” His words were halting, partly because of his hoarse throat and partly because of his condition.

“I remember Cledwyn. Didn’t they… Did they kill him?” His eyes shifted toward Ezekiel.

“Yeah, they did,” the thief answered soberly. “I dunno how he came back, but…”

“Do you remember anything else?” Cassandra whispered.

“Just… Just the fire,” Jake said, his voice as soft as hers. “The pain… _God, it hurt._ ” His eyes were far away, deep, dark circles under them, and the expression on his face was haunted by the memories. “I remember….wanting to die, it hurt so bad.”

Jones was surprised to see Jake’s eyes shimmering, and he reached for the glass of ice water. “Here,” he said gently, sliding his hand under Jake’s head and lifting it so that he could drink. He pulled the glass away as Jake started to cough, easing his head back down to the pillow.

Stone shivered, his brow furrowing as he thought about the close call but then felt a small soft hand carding through his hair and he tentatively opened his eyes. Cassandra wore a look of contentment as she stroked his hair and she smiled at him. “You’re gonna be okay, Jake. We’re all going to make sure of that.”

He nodded as best he could and she stroked the side of his face as his exhaustion dragged him back into the pit.

A couple of hours went by and Jones finally wandered off to his bed after Cassandra promised to have him awakened if anything happened. She didn’t think it would; Jake was obviously so drained that he would probably sleep for the rest of the night.

She was partly right. Jake slept, but his dreams were anything but restful. Caught in a hell of agony, terror and flames, he was so debilitated he was unable to even twitch. 

Her head propped up on her hand, elbow on the bed beside Jake’s head, Cassandra was at the perfect height to notice the tears start to form at the corners of his eyes. Shocked, she sat upright, staring at him for a moment. He wasn’t moving, but she could tell by the set of his face that he was in pain, the dark circles in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin.

Jenkins entered the small room and her head whipped around. “Something’s wrong!” she urged, making him rush to the bedside.

“What..?” he started.

“I don’t know! He was sleeping but then I saw him start to cry and then he got all tense and I know he’s in pain _do_ something!” she rattled all in one breath.

“I shall, Miss Cillian. Calm yourself,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder before disappearing again.

By the time he returned with the others, Jake was writhing on the bed. His head rolled from side to side and his hands were clenched in the bed sheets. A moaning cry came from his lips as Cassandra tried and failed to stop him from moving.

Alcinoe and the other Amazons rushed to the bed and she was crowded out as the other women surrounded Jake.

“What’s wrong?” she pleaded, clasping her hands together tightly.

“Is it the Nectar?” Jenkins asked quietly, making Ezekiel shoot him a glance.

“It may be,” she answered as she lifted his eyelids. “It also may be a night terror.”

“He’s never had night…” Cassandra started before Jones interrupted her.

“ _He’s never been tortured before either!_ ” the thief hissed, then pulled back as she looked worriedly at him.

“Jacob,” Alcinoe said, ignoring the small squabble. She grasped his shoulder firmly and shook. “Jacob Stone, wake up.”

Jake heard the command and tried, really _tried_ to resist the hold that the nightmare had on him, but he was so exhausted, and they were so strong. A cackling laugh came from behind him and he turned; one of the black robed servants flew at him so fast that he jerked back, breaking free.

He lurched up off of the mattress into a shocked Alcinoe and Lykopis’ grips; they caught him as he bolted upright. Jake screamed in pain at the sudden movement and collapsed forward into their arms. They held him gently as he panted and shook violently, his hands tight on their wrists while he fought for breath.

After a few long minutes Jake seemed to settle, and Lykopis placed a hand on the back of his neck as they eased him back down. Whimpers escaped from between tightly clenched teeth as they eased their hands out from under him, sliding across the agonizing burns on his back. When they’d settled him as much as he could, he breathed in panting gasps, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Jake…” Cassandra whispered, crouching next to his head and laying her hand gingerly against his temple. “You’re gonna be okay. It’s gonna get better.”

Jake held onto that promise as he fought against sleep, terrified to go into that dark place again, but lost.


	7. In The Darkness

Jake slipped deeper and deeper into unconsciousness and the Librarians and Amazons grew more and more worried as the days slipped by. He still breathed, but there was absolutely no response from him as they continued to try to get him to drink water nearly every hour now. 

There was no fever, but it was almost as if his spirit had come loose from its’ tether to his body and left it far behind. Even his wounds stopped healing as they should have. There was no infection, but it seemed like Jake was in a sort of suspended animation that baffled everyone, even Jenkins.

On the third day after Jake had woken up for his short time, Flynn and Eve finally returned. Jenkins was relieved when Eve entered the room to see Jake, because it was beginning to become clear that without some kind of nourishment, his ‘suspended animation’ might quickly turn into coma and death. A situation she could handle well, Eve quickly started to search the Library and found all she needed for an IV sitting beside the Clipping Book.

Quickly bringing it back to their little infirmary, she set about trying to insert it, but soon became frustrated.

“What’s wrong?” Flynn asked, hearing her huff for the third time. The rest watched closely, hoping that this would help Jake.

“He’s severely dehydrated,” she said, pinching the skin on the back of his hand and showing them how it stayed in place instead of smoothing back down. “That means he needs fluids, but all of the available veins have nearly collapsed.” She shook her head and looked sideways to his face. “I’m going to have to try in his neck.”

Cassandra squeaked at the thought but Eve held up a hand. “It’s not usually done that way, because it’s rather painful. But with his lack of response so far, I don’t know that he’ll even feel it.”

Cassandra and Ezekiel watched in morbid fascination while Flynn turned away with a grimace as Eve delicately found a vein in Jake’s neck and slid the needle into it, holding her breath.

The flashback of blood into the cannula made her smile and release the breath as she taped it carefully to his skin, then skillfully hooked up the rest of the IV.

Jake didn’t even twitch.

Sitting back in relief, she castigated herself for not being there for her LITs, so the Amazons took her away for some time to try to calm her, reasoning that she wouldn’t have been able to do anything since even they had been unable to save him.

Flynn spent hours in the Library pouring over esoteric books and tomes, even managing to talk with Ray in some stilted fashion through one of the books. Neither of them could figure out was happening to their young Librarian.

…………..

Jake wandered.

Sometimes he thought he was in the present, and others he was sure he was in some past life, although he didn’t know how or why. The landscape around him was a gentle woods, sometimes sparse in trees and in other areas overgrown. The sky was a bright blue with cotton-looking clouds just hiding the sun. He could hear the birds chirping in the background and every once in a while the brush would rustle and he’d glimpse an animal darting into the underbrush.

It was so peaceful that he wondered why he was there instead of that dark place he’d been in before. Then he caught the thoughts and kicked himself. Sometimes he’d get a glance of figures in the distance. One of them he didn’t feel anything but an intense curiosity for, but the others sent shivers down his spine and made him break out in a cold sweat and he didn’t know why. 

His trek through the forest wound around trees and rivers and up and down hills, but the sun never seemed to move, when he could see it, and the day never seemed to get any darker. There was no rain or wind, and no night. Oddly enough, he didn’t seem to get tired either, although he could swear he’d been walking for days.

So when a burst of wind suddenly whipped through the trees, nearly knocking him down to his knees, he was surprised. A darkness fell, not total, but dark enough that it seemed to become twilight all at once. He looked up and saw dark thunderclouds had appeared out of nowhere and the wind picked up in speed and strength.

Out of the darkness he heard chanting:

“ _…. Oh deities of our ancestors, hear us!  
We consecrate this body, purged of pain,  
purged of mind,  
purged of blood.  
Come upon him and bring him over to us!  
By the power of the Blood Chalice,  
let the demons feast and the dead rise!_”

Shards of ice seemed to run through Stone’s veins and he clenched his fists as he heard the monotonous chanting again, his head whipping from side to side to try to find where it was coming from.

Black hooded figures melted out of the surround of trees, encircling him. He stepped back, but more of them were behind him; there was nowhere for him to go.

“ _….Oh gods of my fathers, hear me,_ ” Jake heard then, the crystal clear voice ringing out and erasing the harshness of the other voices.

“ _I give to you my body, my mind and my soul.  
Forgive me of my wrongdoings,  
Make me worthy of your Love.  
By the power of your blood,  
let me rise again with you._”

He frowned, hearing the words. They were so different from the earlier chant, yet so familiar.

A flash of light behind him made him turn, and he saw the figure that he’d been so curiously drawn to earlier in his wanderings.

“Who…” he rasped, his voice harsh from disuse. “Who are you?”

“You would know me as Mary of the White Cloak,” the young woman said, letting the hood fall back over her back. Bright red curls cascaded over her shoulders, looking like a furry scarf. Her face was pale yet covered with freckles, and then she smiled, making him relax.

“Mari y Fantell Wen,” he said, and her eyes widened.

“Always the scholar, you,” she said cryptically, and the smile turned into an impish grin. “I see that time has not changed that.”

Jake’s face screwed up in confusion and her expression changed to something more compassionate.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you. Come,” she said, holding out her hand. He took it and the black hooded figures vanished along with their entire surroundings. Now Jake and Mari stood in a grassy field, green stretching as far as he could see and broken up here and there by stone fences. The scent of the sea teased his nose and he turned to the right. They stood about twenty feet from a cliff, the ocean lying below and the sun sparkling off of the deep blue water.

A niggling familiarity poked at him again, and he dimly recognized this place from when he and his fellow Librarians and their Amazon guardians first exited the Library doors.

“I know this place,” he muttered, turning around again. On the hillside, about half a mile away, sat a comfortable looking cottage with a herd of sheep grazing nearby, a small group of cattle further up the hill behind them. Three dogs patrolled around the sheep, and he could hear their occasional barks when one of the sheep wandered a little too far away.

“I _know_ this place,” he said again. He felt a presence beside him and Mari stepped into his peripheral vision.

“Yes, you should. We lived here.”

“Say what!?” His head jerked around to look at her in surprise.

Mari just smiled and took his hand, leading him closer to the cottage. They stepped onto a gravel path that led to the steading, and passed a couple of small trees struggling to grow in the hot sun. Jake sidestepped automatically and then stopped, looking down to see a depression in the path that he hadn’t noticed before.

“You remember, even when you don’t remember,” she said with a smile. “I don’t know how many times you turned your ankle on that spot before you finally learned to step around it.”

Jake frowned as she spoke, then looked down at the spot again to glare at it. Mari tugged on his hand and they continued their way. He heard the tall grass rustle and his hand went out, meeting the shaggy head of one of the herding dogs. He looked down in surprise again at the natural feel of the dog pacing him as they walked into the farmyard.

“Cochal always met you on the trail and walked you home,” she said softly, as if she was remembering. “He would wait for you on the edge of the field at midday, knowing you’d be home soon, and as soon as he saw you down at the bottom of the hill, he would race down so he could walk with you.” She looked at him with a wistful look. “He barked when he saw you, and I knew then to get your dinner ready for you.”

She reached out with a hand and gently touched his cheek, trailing her fingers down to his chin.

“I loved you so much.”

Jake didn’t know what to say, and it must have shown on his face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was so happy when I saw you cross the veil. I thought this would be easier.”

“Cross….the veil?” he asked, suddenly afraid. “I’m not….I can’t be… Am I dead?”

“Not yet,” she said, again frustratingly cryptic to the scholar. “You are close, frighteningly so for your companions, but there’s still a chance for you to get back. I just wanted…..” She trailed off, looking down and away.

He reached out and put his fingers on her chin, turning her face back to his. To his surprise, he saw tears rolling down her cheeks. “You wanted…what?” he asked quietly.

“I miss you,” she whispered simply. “I wanted some time… Time with you again.”

“Can. Can I stay then? Just for a little bit?” he asked.

She wiped her tears away and tilted her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m told that you’ll know when the time comes to choose.”

Jake took her hand. “Then come and tell me about me, about _us_.”

She squeezed his hand tightly and they continued down the path. Cochal bounded around them, happily jumping in for a pat and then leaping away again. The warmth of the sun calmed Jake’s soul and he smiled in pure contentment as he tilted his head back.

“You did that a lot,” came Mari’s musical voice. He looked back down at her and she smiled. “You loved it here. _We_ loved it here.”

“What happened?”

She led him to a bench near the stone wall and they sat in the sun, the dogs barking and sheep bawling in the background. “We fell in love,” she started simply. “I was the priestess of a church, and you the local huntsman. It was forbidden for me in my position to marry, but when I found you, alone and hurt in the woods, I felt something even then.

“I brought you here, to my cottage. You’d been hunting a wild boar, but when you took the shot to bring him down, something alerted him and he moved at the last minute. You ended up only injuring him, and he charged you. He managed to gore you in the side before you took to the trees. You finally killed him and climbed back down, but you were too weak to get to the village for help.

“That’s when I found you. I brought you back here and tended you wound. You took fever and I prayed over you for two days straight, and finally, the fever broke. You stayed for as long as the boar meat held out, about two weeks, and then you left. But I saw you often after that. 

“I saw you at the crest of the hill as I milked my cows, watching me. Or in the forest as I gathered herbs or flowers. Finally I asked why you were following me, and you said you were protecting me, because I’d taken care of you.”

Jake listened silently, looking down at the dirt of the courtyard. Mari slid a hand over to rest on his thigh. He looked over at her and asked, “What was my name?”

“Bleddyn Carreg.”

He smiled with her. “Stone Wolf. Interesting.”

She continued. “We gradually saw more of each other, in the village, in the forest, at the beach. We fell in love, but I couldn’t marry. We loved, and a child came from that union. I didn’t know what to do, I was frantic, until you laughed and said something about an immaculate conception.”

Jake snorted.

“Yes. You were irreverent from the start and said what you meant without care for shocking others,” she laughed. “So we decided that that is what it would be. I would be the virgin bride of the Christ and lead his people.”

She sighed. “We had three children, two boys and one girl. Owain, Rhiannon, and…”

“Domhnall,” Jake finished.

“You remember,” she smiled.

“His name is…..in a legend,” he replied.

“I know. It isn’t true though, you know,” she said, the smile dying from her face. “He wasn’t angry when I died. He was lost. As was Owain. And you.”

Jake looked over and saw the tears in her eyes again, but then realized her omission. “Rhiannon?”

Mari looked away again. “She felt betrayed. I had promised to bring her up as a priestess but I…I got sick. She wanted to be a priestess so badly and take over as leader of the Church of the White Robe. She’s the one who turned to the Occult to become a priestess.” Mari paused, and then sobbed out, “she _perverted_ my church!”

Jake felt her distress and automatically put his arm around her shoulders and she melted into his side. 

Mari trembled under his arm for a few minutes until she’d gotten herself under control again, sniffling and hiccuping softly. “She started slowly, as all good oppressors do, and as her knowledge grew, so did her greed and hatred. It wasn’t until she’d nearly taken over the town that they finally realized the rifts she’d created, and by then it was nearly too late.

“The villagers took her into custody and there was a short trial, but everyone knew what she’d done. The men she’d enamored…. They managed to bring them out from under her influence, but every one of them died. So…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They burned Rhiannon at the stake as a witch…”

Jake swallowed hard, but Mari wasn’t done.

“Rhiannon left behind a daughter, old enough to have seen her mother burn, and young enough for the memories to warp her into a shadow of her mother. And every daughter down the line, until…” she hiccuped. “Until the last one…got _you_. I’m so sorry…”

“Mari, what could have you done?” he asked gently, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head. “You did nothing wrong. Maybe, if I had been part of Rhiannon’s life more…” He trailed off, not knowing where he’d disappeared to in his past life.

“No, you wouldn’t have been able to,” Mari whispered, looking up at him. “She killed you.”

“She _what?_ ” he exclaimed, shocked.

“She blamed you for me getting sick. She said that it was your responsibility to keep me safe, and you didn’t. She deceived you into following her into the church one night and then drugged you, and… And… And she…” She sobbed. “She killed you! Just like she killed all of those other men! She killed you and brought you back as her first slave, and… and… and you died again when… when the villagers freed you…” Her story ended with her sobbing heavily, her body shaking against his.

“Mari…shhhh,” he tried to soothe. The story rang true to him with chilling accuracy; each word she said, though shocking, made a sad sort of sense.

Then he felt it: a tugging in his chest that made it suddenly hard for him to breathe.

“Mari….” he wheezed, clutching at his chest.

She shot up straight, her hands still fisted in his shirt, wide eyed as she watched him fighting for breath.

“It’s time,” she whispered, and he looked up at her through watering eyes. “Time for you to _choose_.”

“I don’t…” he wheezed. “Don’t….want…to leave you.”

Her hand rested on his cheek. “My dearest, I know you’ll come back to me in time. But that time is not now.” Leaning forward, she kissed him on the lips and then he was falling.

Falling….

Falling….


	8. Something of a Recovery

…. _ma…ri_ ….”

Jenkins heard the gasped whisper and his head whipped around, searching for the source of the sound. He’d been sitting with Jake since dawn, perusing through an old tome and his own memories, searching for something that would help them bring their scholar back to them.

Frowning when he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he drew a shocked breath when he saw Jake’s eyelids flicker. Sliding closer, he picked up the man’s hand, feeling his pulse beating a little faster and stronger.

“Alcinoe,” he said, rousing the sleeping Amazon who had stretched out on the second cot for a nap. “Alcinoe, I think he’s waking up.”

The woman sat up and stepped over to the cot, her hand grasping Jake’s other wrist, measuring his pulse as well. Jake’s eyelids fluttered again and his head moved slightly, his mouth dropping open with a soft moan.

“Jacob,” Alcinoe said softly, her other hand resting on his forehead. No fever, which she smiled to discover. “Jacob Stone, it is time for you to awaken.”

His jaw worked slightly and he let out a whispered groan again, fighting to open his eyes. When he finally managed to open them a slit, he winced at the brightness, even though it was early evening. Jenkins withdrew and lowered the lamp a little before slipping out the door to find the others. 

“Mmmm…wh…” he managed. The Amazon lifted his head gently, holding a glass of cool water to his lips so he could drink. Managing to take a few sips apparently pleased her, and she laid his head back onto the pillow just as the door burst open with a gabble of excited voices.

The suddenness of the noise made Jake wince and whimper, turning his face away. Alcinoe regarded the new arrivals with a glare. “Quiet, all of you, or I shall be forced to have you withdrawn,” she said sternly. “He has only just awakened, and needs calm for awhile yet.”

Cassandra stood in place, visibly quivering with happiness and eager to see her friend, and the rush to the infirmary did nothing to quell Ezekiel’s anxiousness either. Eve and Flynn stood directly behind the two younger Librarians and they craned their necks to see Jake as well.

“Slowly,” Alcinoe said, stepping back and watching like a hawk.

Jones and Cassandra both swooped in, sitting down one on each side of Jake’s bed and taking his hands. They waited with difficulty for Jake to turn his head and look at them, and their eagerness was somewhat dimmed when they saw the utter exhaustion in his dull blue eyes.

“Hey…” Jake whispered, licking his lips.

“Jake,” Cassandra breathed, squeezing his hand. “We’re so glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, mate. “Ezekiel’s normal over-the-top excitement was missing as he spoke calmly to his friend. “It’s good to see you awake. _Finally._ ” He apparently couldn’t help the tiny dig.

“It’s good….to be awake… I think,” Jake managed, coughing a little, which made him groan as the aches of not moving for days on end, coupled with the pain of his injuries, made themselves known.

“How …long?”

“You’ve been unconscious for five days,” Alcinoe said. “Before that, another five days where you were in and out of consciousness.”

“Ten…d…ays?” he croaked. Cassandra reached for the water again and this time Ezekiel lifted his head. Jake’s eyes closed as he concentrated on drinking slowly, knowing that if he went too fast he’d just get sick. After a few minutes he nodded and they helped him settle again.

“Yes,” Eve finally spoke up, worry evident in her voice. “Nearly two weeks! What were you thinking, going out without me?”

“Eve, relax,” Flynn spoke up, even though he was just as distressed as she was. “He’s back, and he’s gonna be okay.”

Owlish blue eyes looked up at the rest of his audience and his brows furrowed. “ ‘m sorry,” he mumbled. “Didn’ mean t’…”

“Hush… Nevermind,” she said as she sat down carefully on the side of the bed. “It’s alright. Flynn’s right, you’re going to be alright. We’ll all see to that.”

He winced at the thought of being mothered to death, but then saw the determination in her eyes. “Yes, we’re going to make sure you don’t overwork yourself,” she confirmed. He groaned again, this time in frustration as he rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at us, Jake.” Cassandra swatted his hand. “You _scared_ us!”

“Sorry, Cass,” he said again, looking up at her. “Didn’t mean to.”

“We all understand, young Librarian,” Lykopis spoke up. “As I’m sure we’ll all understand that young Jacob needs his rest now.” She looked pointedly at the rest of the group.

With sighs and mutters, she and Alcinoe finally managed to herd them out of the room so that the medic could examine Jake and make sure he was healing again. They allowed Eve to stay behind, mostly because she was well trained in first aid and knew how to manage the IVs, but also because the Amazons knew that she also needed to make sure her charge was healing.

When Alcinoe put the tray of instruments and alcohol down at his side, Jake snarled at it and tried to pull away when she lifted his wrist, a pair of scissors in her other hand. Having just woke up, he was reluctant to endure the pain of re-examination.

“Easy, Jake,” Eve said, coming up on his other side with a syringe in one hand, the other on his wrist as he fought weakly.

“Wha…’zzat?”

“It’s a little morphine, just to make sure you aren’t in pain,” she said as she inserted it into the pic line in his neck. 

He didn’t even get a chance to argue, the drug immediately slipping into his system and pulling him under its’ effects. His eyes crossed and rolled back in his head and a moan slipped out as the scissors started to slide up his forearm.

Jake felt everything at a remove, voices floating around him. He was sure that he would be able to understand them if he concentrated, but the will to think fell away as well. He didn’t even care when they peeled back the sheets to unwrap his abdomen and thighs, the gentleness of the morphine keeping him floating in a bubble of contentment.

Eve bit her lip as she held Jake’s arm while Alcinoe slid the scissors under the bandages. They were wrapped all the way from his wrist to his bicep on both arms, more bandages over his abdomen and both legs, and yet another under his back. She was steaming as she remembered Ezekiel’s halting story of what had happened. 

The stitches along the inside of his arms were small and neat and she approved, knowing that she couldn’t have done better. They were red, but not angrily so, so they daubed on more antibacterial cream and rewrapped them. The burns on his abdomen were less healed, the skin a dark red with black here and there. Alcinoe carefully removed the dead black tissue with tweezers while Eve daubed the area clean.

Every once in a while they would look up as Jake uttered soft moans, but they knew he was deeply under the care of the morphine. After spreading a cooling gel onto the gauze pads, they laid them over the burns, relaxing as Jake let out a relieved breath. 

Moving down, they folded the sheet over one side, leaving him his dignity as they worked on first one thigh and then the other. Here the stitches were complete within the muscle, but Alcinoe had left the wounds open for a while to drain, packing them instead with medicinally soaked gauze.

“Hold him,” Alcinoe started to pull the packing from the gashes which made her patient jerk, his hands trying to grab for them. Eve grasped his thigh at the knee, her other hand holding his hip down to the mattress. 

Jake whimpered and struggled weakly, the pain stabbing into him even through the haze of morphine. Tiny pricks traveled up and down his thigh and his head rolled to the side, deep furrows between his brows as he panted shallowly.

“Should I give him more morphine?” Eve asked.

“I would like not to,” Alcinoe answered, stitching as carefully as she could given Jake’s wriggling. “If he fully comes awake or fights more, we may have to, but I worry about giving him even this much. It was far too hard for him to fight back the last two times; I would not like to make it three.”

Eve frowned as the Amazon spoke, both in worry that Jake was so weak, but also in frustration that she couldn’t rid him of this pain.

Jake renewed his struggles as they began work on his other thigh, his cries a little louder. Andromeda opened the door and slipped in; Eve knew the others were just on the other side, listening.

Without needing to be told, the second Amazon slid into Eve’s place, her strength equal to Jake’s on a good day. Eve moved up to press one arm across his chest, avoiding the burns, her other hand on his forehead. “Easy, Jake,” she whispered to him, stroking his sweaty forehead. “It’s almost over, and you can rest.”

He calmed a little, but the tiny whimpers that she heard as he panted broke her heart; she was glad neither Cassandra nor Ezekiel were there to hear him. “It’s okay,” she soothed again, her thumb caressing his temple as she continued to hold him down.

“..m…mari…” he breathed softly.

Eve tilted her head at the whisper, unsure if it was a name or some word in a different language, but didn’t interrupt Alcinoe in her work. 

The Amazon finished the final stitch, nipping the thread close to the wound. “There, Jake,” Eve whispered, smoothing Jake’s damp hair back. It was getting just long enough to curl when it got wet, and she tried to tame them beside his cheek. “It’s over. You can rest now.”

Jake heard words floating by his head; someone was talking to him, trying to calm him. The piercing fire that laced across both thighs was receding, allowing the morphine to do its’ job again, pulling him into a weightless rest. He mumbled a little more before slipping into darkness.

Lykopis went in to sit with Jake when Eve and the other two Amazons came out. Cassandra and Jones refused to be kept away now that the scholar had returned to consciousness, and wouldn’t budge until they were able to talk to him for longer than five minutes at a time. 

Jake woke to the odd sound of ‘ _skrik….skrik_ ’ repeating over and over. Opening his eyes, he saw the two Librarians sitting next to the bed again, and saw the origin of the sound behind them: Lykopis sat cross-legged on the second cot, sharpening one of her knives with a whetstone in one hand. Her eyes flicked up as she felt his gaze, a warmth entering them as she saw him awake again.

“Jacob,” she said respectfully, nodding her head once. With her words, the other two became aware that he was awake again, and they leaned into his field of view.

Blinking as they suddenly came closer, he looked back and forth between them. “Um. What?” he asked.

“Don’t fall asleep on us again!” Cassandra pleaded, and the hand on her side was suddenly engulfed in a tight squeeze.

“Seconded, mate,” Jones said. “I’m getting sick of watching you check your eyelids for cracks.”

Jake had the childish urge to stick out his tongue and did it, amused by the surprise on the thief’s face. His friends settled a little more into their chairs as they began to speak quietly between themselves, smiling to each other when Jane mumbled a sleepy response here and there.


	9. Discovery of a Lifetime

After that Jake began to heal quickly, and it was three days later that he was arguing with Eve and Jones about being allowed out of the bed for more than a trip to the bathroom.

“My ass is gonna grow to the bed!” he complained. 

“Your ass is going to _stay_ in that bed until Alcinoe says otherwise!” Eve retorted, pointing to said matress.

“How the hell am I supposed to get any stronger if I don’t at least stand up?” he tried.

Eve glared at him and the door opened at just that moment, the Amazon in question stepping in.

“Alcinoe!” Jake said with relief. “Please, _please_ tell Eve that I can get up and move around, at least a little? I’m going _nuts_ sitting in this bed all day!”

Alcinoe pursed her lips and one brow raised. “Only if one of us is with you,” she bargained, and he eagerly nodded his head. “Fine! Yes! Okay, whatever you want,” he agreed.

So for the rest of the week Jake endured at least two people with him most of the time, a combination of both Librarians and Amazons. He enjoyed his teammates company for the most part, except when Jones started to get particularly troublesome. The Amazons he studied surreptitiously, and suspected them of doing the same. 

Alcinoe, of course, was with him the most, keeping an eye on his wounds and making sure he didn’t overtax himself. He had to keep reminding himself to slow down and not get too impatient or he’d earn a stern reprimand from her. It was hard, though, to make himself relax; he was much more used to getting up in the morning and not stopping until well into the night. He wasn’t much accustomed to being lazy. 

On the other hand, it was nearly impossible to actually get up and go. Physically getting to a standing position was embarrassingly slow and painful, and for the first few days he’d needed someone to help him lever himself up. Once he was on his feet he felt okay, but his energy level was nil and he found himself tiring almost right away, much to his frustration.

Andromeda and Ezekiel were the ones who usually weathered his temper. The thief just let it roll off his back and ignored it while at the same time chattering on as if nothing happened. Sometimes he’d go a little too far and Jake would snap at him, but the anger only lasted a few seconds and then apologies were given and accepted.

Andromeda endured his attitude because it was she who assisted him with his ‘therapy’. She would walk beside him when he made his treks down the library’s halls and she was the one who decided what he could lift and carry. He admitted to himself that the Amazon was not a gentle therapist; if anything, she kept him near his limits, which was what he’d probably do himself if given the chance. The only difference was that she could read the pain on his face to judge when to make him stop, and was at his side when he faltered.

Lykopis, the Amazon who’d naturally taken to him as they’d paired off that first day, was the one who intrigued him the most. Her company was quiet but watchful, and the silences weren’t awkward. Instead, they seemed rather peaceful, and he felt most relaxed when she was the one with him.

He took the opportunity to study her as she perused the spines of the books that surrounded him as he read. Ensconced in the most comfortable chaise in the Library, he always had a stack of books on either side of him to study. From the moment he could get out of the infirmary he’d beelined it to the section on ancient legends of Scotland and the surrounding countrysides.

Today Lykopis had disappeared around one of the stacks and Jake idly looked up, having sensed her missing. His eyes fell on a table that he could swear hadn’t been there this morning. There was a ancient-looking book resting on it, and a small statue beside it. His curiosity tweaked, Jake pushed himself out of the chair with a grunt. The soft sound brought his Amazon to his side, and before he was able to straighten up, he felt her steady hands on the small of his back and his arm.

“Why do you stand?” she asked with a hint of admonishment in her voice.

“That book over there,” he said, nodding toward it.

She made a small noise of surprise in seeing it but made no other comment; the Amazons had quickly adapted to the Library’s anticipation of their needs. Helping him limp over to it, she steadied him as he reached out first to the statue. It was made out of a stone that he could see bits of blue topaz and what looked like silver striping it. The carving was of a wolf, well worn with handling, with two sapphire chips for eyes.

The book had an intricately carved leather cover, with knotwork and zoomorphs crawling all over the front, spine and back of the book. It was beautifully done. In one corner he saw the initials ‘B.C.’ and shivered a little at the familiar feel of the book in his hands.

“I need to read this.” His voice was hushed and Lykopis seemed to understand the importance of the book, and she helped him back to the chaise without a word. When he was settled, he saw her place the carved wolf on the stack of books beside him and he glanced up, nodding.

She returned to her investigation of the Library and its’ wonders, and Jake opened the book. He swallowed when he saw his handwriting, the blocky but neat letters forming words in a language he both knew and didn’t know. The ancient phrasing threw him for a loop for a while, until he got used to reading with an accent. Small notations in the margins were stream of consciousness thoughts and ponderings.

Apparently the Library had found a journal of sorts. He deciphered enough of the first chapter to realize that this story began during the hunter’s convalescence at Mari’s home. Bleddyn had evidenced his boredom and Mari had given him the journal to scribe his thoughts into. He’d just started with what he’d needed to do for the fall to prepare, what he wanted to hunt, how much fish he had to smoke, as if the journal was merely a To Do list. Gradually though, his thoughts about his pretty caretaker crept into the writings, until the entries suddenly became short and terse. After the first few pages was when he’d left her cottage and struck out on his own again. Not having hours and hours of free time to write, the entries were now random but filled with the love he was beginning to feel for the woman.

Gradually the story fleshed out into their courtship and need for secrecy, their story to cover her pregnancy and their plan to see it through, and then the family life they enjoyed first with two sons and then their daughter. Jake smiled as he read some of the tales, but his smile soon turned to tears as he read his own account of Mari’s sickness and eventual death. From what he understood, she’d contracted tuberculosis. It had been quick, which was a mercy, but it had left Bleddyn with two sons and a young daughter to take care of.

Owain and Domhnall were nearly grown and a great help at the time, but the young Rhiannon was withdrawn and sullen. The story told of her descent into madness and then it suddenly stopped, and Jake felt a chill run down his spine when he realized that was the moment she’d probably killed him.

The journal went on though, in different handwriting. Domhnall had taken up the diary, documenting the village finally capturing Rhiannon and putting her to death, and then the troubles they’d had themselves raising Rhiannon’s young daughter, who was near the same age as her mother had been when Mari died.

The rest of the journal was a succession of his sons and his sons sons, passed on down through the patriarchal line, documenting always what was happening on Rhiannon’s side of the family.

Jake was sickened as he read how his Mari’s Church of the White Cloak became perverted even more. The original ritual hadn’t included all of the torture Jake had gone through. It had started merely as drugging and then bleeding out the victim, but over time that hadn’t been enough to satiate whatever demon Rhiannon had struck her bargain with.

Bleddyn’s original line had grown quite a bit throughout the centuries, and he was shocked to know that every one of the men who were captured were either directly from his line or a divergent one. That meant that in some way, Cledwyn had been a relative of his.

He nearly threw up when he read that the pit of bones was filled in with the bones and bodies of the victims when the flesh finally rotted away.

With those two revelations, he realized that the pit he’d been held in for hours on end had been filled with the bones and bodies of his own ancestors and family. He swallowed hard through a small panic attack that left him weak and sweating.

Putting the book down on his lap and clenching his shaking hands into fists, he was startled to see that it was night. Someone had turned on the lights when he wasn’t paying attention. Alcinoe and Jenkins were his attendants at the moment, and the older man came to him with a concerned look on his face.

“Mr. Stone?” Jenkins said. “Jacob, are you alright?”

Jake swallowed again and thought for a moment, finally nodding. “Yeah…” he breathed, then, stronger, he said, “Yeah, I’m okay. Just a…a flashback, I guess.”

“Lykopis said that you were immersed in that journal,” Alcinoe spoke up. “She said you started to read it and then it was like you didn’t hear or notice anything else. You didn’t even look up when we finally turned the lights on for you, or brought you something to drink.”

His brows went up and he looked to the side, embarrassed to see a now-cold cup of tea and a sandwich beside it. “Sorry, I guess I _was_ a little wrapped up in this.”

“What is ‘this’?” she asked.

“It’s a journal,” he confirmed. “It tells a lot of…what I’ve been looking for, about the reasons for all of…this.” He gestured to all of the bandages that still held him together like a halloween mummy.

“Who’s journal?” Jenkins asked, and his brows went into his hairline at Jake’s answer:

“Mine.”


	10. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in here with me! I think there's one more chapter of Bleddyn's life to go.

“Wait, _your_ journal?” Cassandra asked. The Librarians had come at Jenkins’ request, and now they were all ensconced in the reading nook that Jake had claimed for the moment. “What do you mean yours? I mean, it’s like…hundreds of years old!”

“Two hundred and thirty, actually,” Jake answered. “Give or take.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense, mate,” Jones shook his head, a frown on his face. “You weren’t alive back then.”

“But Bleddyn was,” Jenkins said, a hint of understanding dawning in his eyes.

Jake looked up at the tall man and nodded. “Yeah. Bleddyn was…was _me_.”

“Reincarnation!” Cassandra squeaked, her hands clasped as she bounced a little on her chair. “Past lives?”

“Something like that….?” Jake shrugged. “All I know is what Mari told me.”

“Wait again,” Alcinoe held up her hand. “Mari, who is that? And where did you see her?”

“Mari of the White Cloak?” Lykopis asked, and Jake nodded.

For the next hour Jake explained what had happened in his fever dreams, his journey with Mari and her revelations, and then what he’d found in the journal. The group bounced around theory after theory, trying to figure out why Jake’s ‘daughter’ Rhiannon had slipped so thoroughly from reality.

“It could have been a curse?” Flynn said, pacing back and forth with his chin in his hand. “Maybe someone in the village found out about Mari and Bleddyn and deemed it heresy?”

“It’s…possible,” Jake said slowly. “But I don’t think that was right.”

“How would _you_ knooohnevermind,” Jones shut his mouth with a snap.

“Brain grape?” Cassandra interjected. “What? Maybe she had a brain tumor, too,” she said defensively as they all turned their heads to look at her.

“I think it was a demon,” Jake said slowly as silence fell and grew. The others looked at him this time and his face twisted a little in thought. His eyes grew distant as he tried to hang onto the feeling that the journal had given him.

“I think…with Mari’s church, it was… well, the ultimate struggle between good and evil,” he said with a shrug as he tried to explain it. “Somehow Mari had attracted the notice of some demon or devil, I don’t know exactly what it was. But it influenced Rhiannon, making her want control of the church.”

“And when Mari died…” Alcinoe prompted when he stopped for a moment.

“When Mari died, that…thing came to her and promised the power that she wanted. She made some kind of…pact…with it.”

“And you were the first victim,” Jenkins finished. “The first one that cemented the bond between Rhiannon and the demon.”

“But you were also the last,” Flynn said in a low voice. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Jake shivered again as another cold chill shot up his spine, holding onto his shoulders. “And I don’t think I like the ideas I’m finding.”

“Finding?” Eve asked.

“Yeah. I haven’t gotten to the end of the journal yet. And there are places where it references another journal. Rhiannon’s.”

Flynn stopped pacing at those words. “Then we need to find her journal, too.”

……….- o - o - o - o……….

Deciphering the journal took more out of the scholar than he had expected, and even though he desperately wanted to finish it, his head was nodding sleepily just half an hour after the Big Explanation.

“Jacob,” Andromeda said for the third time. “I will not say again, you must sleep.”

“Huhwzzat?” Jake mumbled, then grunted at her. She took it as an assent and put her hand under his arm and lifted him to his feet. Giving him a moment to orient himself, she slid her arm under his shoulder and held onto his waist as she guided him back to the infirmary.

“Why can’t I go to my room?” he asked sleepily.

“Because I’m told that your rooms are on the third floor,” she said to his grumble. “And I do not feel like carrying you up two and a half flights of stairs.”

“Oh right. Thanks, mom,” he snarked and heard her soft chuckle.

He didn’t argue anymore, his eyes nearly shut by the time they reached the infirmary. The Library had apparently heard him though, because instead of the firm and narrow bed that he’d been sleeping in for the past few weeks, this one was plush and covered with down pillows and comforter.

Jake was so tired though that he didn’t notice until he laid down, then he opened his eyes in surprise as he felt the softness of the bed he was in. “Thanks, Ray,” he said softly just before he fell asleep.

Andromeda shook her head and sat back, crossing her arms over her chest as she sat watch for the night. However, many times she found herself rising and moving to Jake’s bedside, finally just staying there as he tossed and turned in his nightmares, trying without success to soothe and quiet him.

Suddenly he shot up out of sleep with a shout, eyes wide and wild. He grabbed onto Andromeda’s arms and whipped his head around. “I know who it was! I know what happened!”

……….- o - o - o - o……….

After the group had once been assembled, Jake whiling away the minutes frantically flipping back and forth in the journal, he looked up at them, nearly vibrating with nerves.

“It was three of them,” he blurted, and Jenkins frowned. 

“Three…what? Demons? They don’t usually work together.”

Jake ignored the confused stares the taller man was getting from the rest and continued almost as if he hadn’t spoken. “Yes, three of them. Rhiannon’s obsession wasn’t _fueled_ by the demons, it’s what _attracted_ them in the first place.

“Vetis was the first. He’s the temptor of the holy, the one who felt her passion and came from the underworld to find her, and a few ‘friends’ tagged along. Verin was one of them, the demon of impatience. He nagged and nagged Vetis to get on with it, and I think that he may have made him talk Rhiannon into poisoning Mari.” His voice became soft with the realization.

“But you said Mari died of tuberculosis?” Cassandra said with a tilt of her head.

“I thought it was tuberculosis, but I think I read it wrong. Classic symptoms of tuberculosis are fever, chills, loss of appetite, weight loss and fatigue. But the symptoms of digitalis poisoning is nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abnormal heart rate, weakness, tremors, and weight loss. The loss of appetite could be explained by vomiting and nausea and just generally feeling crappy enough to not eat.”

“But didn’t tuberculosis also present with blood when they coughed?” Eve asked.

“Yes,” Alcinoe answered, seeing the parallels. “That could have been caused by irritation in the throat from harsh vomiting.”

“You said three demons,” Flynn prompted, shaking Jake out of his blank stare.

“Wh…oh, yeah. The third would have been Eurynomous, god of death. He was the one she’d have made the deal with.”

“Sooo, what now?” Ezekiel asked, looking from face to face. “How do we get you out of this deal? I mean, are you even a part of it?”

“Or do you think that maybe…. It’s come full circle?” Cassandra asked quietly. “I mean, You…um, _Bleddyn_ , was the first, and Flynn said you were the last, so…?”

“I don’t know for sure,” he shrugged. “I don’t _think_ so? I mean, I still have the feeling that there’s something more I should do, something that will bring, I don’t know…closure to this?” He blinked as he looked at the others.

Jenkins’ brows rose and he shrugged one shoulder. “There is still the issue of Rhiannon’s journal. Perhaps it would shed some light onto this dilemma.”

“Yeah, but where _is_ it?” Jake sighed, frustrated, as he rubbed his forehead.

“That’s enough,” Alcinoe finally spoke up, having seen the strain the conversation was taking on the scholar. “You need more rest.”

Over Jake and the others’ protestations, she pulled the Doctor card and shooed everyone out and shut the doors. Lykopis had volunteered to stay and returned to Jake, pulling the pillows out from behind his back.

“You heard Alcinoe. It is time for you to sleep.” Her voice was stern. “If we were in Themeyscira I would tie you to the bed myself until I deemed you healed.” She stood and tilted her head, smiling impishly. “And perhaps longer.” 

She left Jake speechless as she walked back to the other cot and sat down, coiling her legs beneath her as she pulled out her whetstone and a knife and started sharpening it like nothing had happened.

He swallowed and tried to relax, his eyes popping open every now and again to look at her. She made no other comment though and he started to settle, then fell asleep without even noticing. As soon as he did, his embarrassment and shyness turned into apprehension as he felt the presence of the three demons pressing close to his skin.

No matter how much he tried he couldn’t see them, only feel them getting closer and closer, their sulfuric stench burning his nostrils. All he could see was darkness, with red mists floating past him every once in a while. The very air felt moist and hot, as if he were again in some underground cavern. He imagined that this was what the trip to hell would feel like, only hotter.

_you have come_

Jake heard the words not with his ears, but inside his head. 

_you are the one she promised_  
_you are the one who will fulfill the contract_   
_you are the one who will feed my soul_

“Who are you?” he asked out loud.

_you know who i am  
you know what i want_

“You’re not going to get it from me, demon!” he yelled, refusing to back down even though he was shaking to his core. “I’m going to stop y…!!” 

His words were cut off as his throat was constricted by an unseen hand. He scratched and clawed at his throat uselessly, unable to even touch whatever it was that was choking him.

All of a sudden he was released and he fell, gasping in huge, wheezing breaths as a bright light exploded from behind him. Jake could see the demons now, shapeless black… _things_ that he didn’t even have words for. He could make out horns and scaly tails, claws and menacing presences that he felt more than saw.

A soft hand came to rest on his shoulder and suddenly he could breathe again. Standing, he turned to see Mari beside him. Seeing her didn’t surprise him, for some reason. She laid a hand on the side of his head, gripping his skull, her other hand outstretched toward the demon, holding it off.

“I’ve not got much time, beloved,” she whispered, her face and voice strained. “This is my last gift to you.”

The white glow of her hand enveloped his head and he screamed. It felt like all of the information in the Library was being crammed into his head all at once.

It _hurt_.

He fell, boneless, to the ground.

……….- o - o - o - o……….

“Jake!” he heard dimly, then felt someone shaking him. “ _Jake!_ Wake up!”

He blinked his eyes open, a moan slipping out of his mouth. Someone was holding something to his nose, making it hard to breathe, and he tried to pull away.

“Easy, Jacob, calm down,” Alcinoe said as he tried to pull her hand away. He’d begun thrashing in the bed a few hours ago and Lykopis had called for her; the others heard and came too, as always. 

When she arrived Lykopis was holding Jake down as he writhed on the bed. She feared another fever as she saw him covered in sweat, but just as soon as she stepped into the room, he stopped fighting. For a few moments the scholar was calm before he arched and cried out sharply, falling limply to the bed.

Then she saw the blood streaming from his nose, dripping down his neck to the pillow. Grabbing a gauze, she held it to his nose, tilting his head back and trying to wake him.

Now, the frantic look in his eyes slowly receding, he stopped fighting and instead explored the bandage with his hand. She released it, letting him hold it on his own.

“What happened?” Cassandra squeaked. Jones was standing beside her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He was wearing green footie pajamas. Jake arched a brow but said nothing. He’d save that tidbit for later.

“I’m not sure,” he mumbled, his eyes traveling around to the others. “But I…”

He struggled to sit up and pushed back Alcinoe and Lykopis’ restraining hands.

“I _have_ to get up,” he said. “I have to…I have to go….somewhere.” He sounded confused, and was. He just knew that he had to go through the annex door to somewhere. He figured he’d know where when he got there.

“No, you can’t go anywhere,” Eve started to say.

“Maybe,” Jenkins interrupted quietly, holding up a hand. “Maybe….the dream told him something."

They looked at Jake, who was staring at the little sculpture of the wolf on the nightstand.

“I know what I need to do.”

……….- o - o - o - o……….

“Jacob Stone, I strongly advise against this,” Alcinoe frowned as she looked at the Librarian, wrapped up in his warmest fleece lined cargo pants and layers of shirts, covered with a thick jacket and a wool beanie on his head. He had a hard time staying warm after losing so much blood, but instead of staying in bed and recovering, he demanded to be let out to finish his unknown task.

In one hand he held the journal close to his chest, his other hand wrapped around the carved wolf in his pocket.

“What are you going to do?” Flynn asked at the same time Eve said, “Who’s going to go with you?”

“No one, I have to do this alone.” He waited until the explosion of yelling settled into a dull roar. “I have to do this alone! It’s the only way!” he called over them.

“Why?” Jenkins asked, as cool as ever.

Jake pressed his lips together. “I just. I just do. I don’t know why. But the Library will open the door if I need you, I’m pretty sure of that.”

Eve started to argue once more but Jenkins, and surprisingly, _Flynn_ intervened. “Eve, he obviously knows what he’s doing,” Flynn said.

“He just said he didn’t!” she yelped. “He has no idea what he’s doing, why he’s doing it…” She was waving her hands in the air in frustration when they heard the door close.

“JAKE!!!!”

……….- o - o - o - o……….

Using the argument as cover, Jake slipped to the side little by little, then charged out the door as soon as it opened. He tripped on a hillock as he ran through, landing on his face with an “Ooomph!”

He struggled to his feet, reeling a little as he straightened. He thanked his lucky stars that he’d managed to get through the door during the argument; he had a feeling they would have murdered him if they found out exactly what he was up to.

Or at least strapped him down to the bed like Lykopis had threatened. Promised?

He shook the thoughts out of his head even as he blushed, highly flattered. Now was not the time to think with his downstairs brain.

Looking around, he saw that the Library had transported him to about the same place as last time. Just through that thicket up ahead to his right Jake would find the obelisk that had captured him and Ezekiel.

He pushed through the leaves and branches, finding himself in the clearing again. But this time, he saw dozens of gravestones surrounding the tall monument. He wasn’t sure if he’d seen them before, or blocked them out of his memory. Walking slowly past the stones, he traveled back decades, then centuries, as the dates receded into time. After three hours of scraping through old growth grass and weeds, he found Owain and Domhnall’s gravestones, and then Mari’s. Kneeling before his wife’s grave, he bowed his head and finally wept.


	11. A Final Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pulling out all the stops, Jake struggles with time to lay his past to rest.

Jake had no idea how long he’d been bowed over Mari’s grave, but when he finally shook himself back to awareness, the sun was nearing the height of the sky. Dredging up the memories that Mari had flooded into his mind in that last moment, he reached out to her headstone.

His hand paused for a moment, seeing only her name carved on the rough tablet, the pain in his heart surprising him as he realized he hadn’t been able to rest beside her in death, or even have his name inscribed on the headstone next to hers.

Shaking off the melancholy, he lowered his hand to the grass in front of the stone. Grunting with the effort, he managed to pry the heavy stone from the earth and push it back. Under the stone lay another book, similar to his journal, but a lot thinner. He’d found not Rhiannon’s journal, like he thought his had referenced, but _Mari’s!!_

Pulling it from its hundreds’ year resting spot, he reverently brushed the dirt from the carvings. Ages ago, his hand had worked flowers in the knotwork on hers instead of the animals he’d put on his own. His fingers traced the lines as his eyes softened.

Shaking his head, he put down both journals and pulled off his fingerless gloves. Flipping the pages of her journal, he found the passage that his had said he would find and started to read carefully. Looking up at the sun, he realized he didn’t have much time.

The cold wind whipped around him as he stood, and he glanced around at the four corners of the small clearing and saw the four smaller obelisks like he had the first time he’d been there. One was slightly tipped to the side, and he ran to upright it. The moment he did, the sun reached it’s zenith and shined down. The ray of light was fractured into four when it hit the top of the monument, a ray streaming to each of the smaller ones. When they were bathed in light, he looked at the large obelisk and saw a shimmering circle. Knowing what was going to happen, he reluctantly put his hand on it.

Unlike before, the cavern he was transported into was about the size of the annex in the Library, but without doors or windows, and would have been completely black except for some kind of light shining down from above. He could tell though that it wasn’t natural sunlight, because the air was old and stale, as if nothing had been in that room for centuries or longer.

Looking around, he saw writing scratched into the wall; it was in all languages, from all over the world, from ancient Sumerian to middle English to modern Russian. 

All of them said the same word: Euronymous.

He was in the underworld, in the chamber of none other than the The One Who Feeds on the Dead.

Swallowing hard, he glanced around himself, but still he was alone. It didn’t give him reassurance.

…. _mortal_ ….

He started as he heard the word hissed out like a serpent’s sigh and he clenched his teeth.

“Euronymous,” he said out loud.

…. _you know meeeee_ …..

“Yes. You made a pact with my…my daughter.”

…. _rhiannonnnn… daughter of the white cloak_ …..

“I’m here to close the deal.”

“…. _what is agreed upon cannnnnot be reneged_ …. came the hissing reply, and he had the feeling that the god was getting annoyed.

“Yes it can. Your deal was with Rhiannon and all of the daughters in her line. There are no more daughters to carry on your contract, therefore it is null and void.”

This time the hiss turned into a growl and Jake knew he was getting close. …. _there are no terms for ending this contract. the contract will remain open_ …..

“There’s no point in that for you,” Jake countered. “No more souls to steal. There is no one to continue the rituals. They’re all dead.”

…. _there’s you_ …..

This was the stumbling block that Jake had been afraid of. That he was the guarantor of the deal, and that his soul would be the last. He gasped in a quick breath as smoke filled the chamber and then coalesced into a form in front of him. Before he could react, two hands grabbed onto his head, holding him tightly. He cried out and struggled to free himself, clawing at the hands as he tried to pull away.

…. _your soul will be miiiineee_ ….. Glee filled the voice as he felt his temples begin to grow cold, the iciness flowing down into his shoulders and chest. His face twisted as the cold started to slow down his thinking, and a face appeared out of the mist in front of him, leering at him as a mouth opened and neared.

Suddenly a shriek of fury and pain cut through the ice and he was released so fast he stumbled backwards.

…. _HOW DARE YOU_ the demon screamed at him. _HOW DARE A MORTAL HAVE AMBROSIA IN HIS VEINS_

With a start Jake remembered Ezekiel telling him about how Cassandra had pleaded with the Amazons to save him. They’d given him Ambrosia, something that mortals would burn up with the power of. Unless there was a just reason for it. Or if the Gods saw a purpose for it.

He didn’t question it. “Yes,” he snarled back at Euronymous. “Yes. Ambrosia. Which means that the Gods themselves are on my side. Can you take them all, Eater of Souls?”

The scream that followed was deafening, painful, and filled with impotent rage. Jake slapped his hands over his ears and crouched down, huddling on his knees as everything in the chamber seemed to explode all at once.

When the debris stopped falling and the dust settled a bit, he dared to raise his head and open his eyes, looking around.

He’d been transported to the inner halls of the ritual cavern and he shivered at the memory of only two weeks before.

Standing up on shaky legs, he walked through the dim hallways, finally making it to the center cavern and he walked slowly down the staircase to the bottom. Passing the bone pit, he resolutely ignored it as he made his way to the final sacrificial alters, Mari’s voice now filling his head and telling hm what to do.

There he found the bodies of the high priestess and her Acolytes lying as they had fallen according to what the Amazons had told him of the fight. 

He looked down into the beautiful, young face of his many-times-great-granddaughter and a sadness welled up in him. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen. The memories Mari had given him gave no instructions for her, but he knelt down and straightened her body anyway, crossing her arms over her chest and then caressing her dark raven colored hair. Reaching for her sash, he placed it over her face, then slowly stood.

Looking through the hall, he saw the zombie followers had apparently just fallen where they had stood, because Lykopis had insisted that they hadn’t been touched. Jake had anticipated this; with the power of their priestess now gone, the power that animated them was, too. He had the feeling that this happened at every rise of a new priestess. The dying priestess’ followers would die when she did, and the woman who took her spot would have to create her own worshippers, following the ritual that Rhiannon had created to give Euronymous his payment of souls. That was why the Clipping Book had waited until now to send them on the quest: the new ruler of this underworld was rising and had to be stopped before the cycle began all over again.

One thing in the chamber was different.

Andromeda said that the priestess had thrown the chalice at her and the blood had sprayed all over the alter. Now, however, the chalice sat at the head of the alter, filled to the brim with a thick, dark red liquid.

Jacob’s blood.

He didn’t even think about how it wasn’t supposed to be there, or how, logically, it should have all been dried up by now. Instead, he looked at the white wrappings laid out on the alter in front of it; burial robes.

Gathering up the soft sheets, he turned and now went with purpose back to the chamber he and Jones had been held in. Spreading the robes out on the floor beside the pit, he took a deep, shuddering breath and climbed down amongst the bones.

His fists clenched as he knelt down, pausing as he took another deep breath through his nostrils. Nodding to himself, he reached forward and started picking the skulls up, moving them to the side, and digging deeper.

Hundreds of skulls rested there, and he was looking for one.

It was hours later when he finally made it to the bottom of the pit, dark earth beneath the final layer. Reaching to his right, he touched another skull, intent only on moving it to the side with the others when a shock went through him, freezing him in place. His body shook as his eyes rolled back and his hands trembled as he held the skull. 

He opened his eyes slowly, finding himself looking straight up at the ceiling of the cavern. He was panting heavily, like he’d just run a marathon, and he looked down at the skull he held.

Taking another deep, shuddering breath, he knew that he was holding Bleddyn’s, in effect, his _own_ , skull.

The earth started to churn, and if he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have gotten there pretty quick. Dirt roiled as the bones rolled over, one skeleton emerging from the depths to rest on the earth before it stilled and became quiet again. Standing, he reached up and put the skull on the burial robes, then gathered all of the bones that had risen to the surface and laid them with the skull.

When he was finished, he climbed out of the pit, then carefully folded the bones in the wrappings. With the bundle in his arms, he turned back to the pit, feeling…. _hope?_ ….coming from the bones.

Shaking off the odd feeling, he carried his burden back to the alter and laid it out as well as he could, the skeleton _his skeleton_ taking shape just as he himself had laid on this very rock. 

Chills ran up his spine again as he looked at the chalice, then he gritted his teeth and picked it up in both hands and poured it over the skull and then over the bones down to the foot of the alter.

The air in the chamber grew heavy and then suddenly his legs went weak and he fell backwards onto his ass in shock. As he watched, muscles, ligaments and skin formed on the skeleton from the inside out. Creeping up to his knees, he looked up and saw his own face on the body and gulped.

The similarities were shocking. _Of course they are. It’s_ you _, you moron,_ he thought to himself as he looked down. The body had a few more scars than he did, a testament to a harder life, and the hair was longer, down past the strong shoulders. But deep crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes said that this was a man who’d smiled and laughed a lot, and had been happy.

Jake reached out and touched the body and it melted into a pile of dust, under the bones that still remained. Wrapping them up again, he made sure they were secure before lifting the now-slight bundle into his arms.

Retracing his steps to the staircase, he climbed upwards to the door that Cassandra and the Amazons had come in through. Somehow he knew the way back to the surface and was able to ignore the misleading corridors that branched off every once in a while.

Walking through the door, he blinked in the bright afternoon sunlight. The bundle in his arms was growing heavier; Jake was well past his limitations right now. Steeling himself for another grueling task, he put foot in front of foot and trekked back to the clearing.

Finally arriving, he knelt at Mari’s grave, laying the wrapped skeleton down onto the earth. Knowing that he was laying Bleddyn to his final rest made a swell of emotions roll over him and he bent over the body, finding himself crying again, this time with a little bit of relief mixed in with his sadness.

“Jacob Stone. Bleddyn Carreg,” he heard, and lifted his head, sure that no-one had followed him.

He was right. But a figure stood before him nonetheless.

The…being…in front of him held a weight of centuries on his shoulders, his eyes boring into Jake’s, and the feeling he got was that this was an immortal. 

Also, Jake could see right through him.

“Babael,” he whispered. Keeper of graves.

“Yes,” the immortal said. “You have need of me?”

“I… I do.” He looked down at the bundle at his knees. “I want….I _need_ to bury this man,” he said, raising his head. “He needs to be with the ones he loves, with his family. Demons have kept him away for too long, and he belongs here, with his loved ones.”

“Lay him out, young one,” Babael instructed.

Rising to his feet, Jake unwrapped the ritual robes and spread them on the ground beside where he felt Mari was, under the earth. On his hands and knees, he started with the skull again, arranging the bones to the best of his ability.

Before he could even stand up, he felt hands on his shoulders and a massive feeling of peace and completion filled him. The dirt started to churn again and the bones started to sink, descending to their place beside Mari until finally, grass covered the ground once again.

Jake reveled in the feeling of contentment that radiated up into him from the earth and the hands on his shoulders lifted away gently, leaving him alone once again.

Glancing at the headstone one last time, he smiled when he saw the inscription now.

Mari and Bleddyn Carreg

Beloved

Forever

 

fin


End file.
